Australians at War Film Archive

I spent the first part of my early life at Kalgoorlie until about six years of age, my father died and my mother brought most of the girls up, and my brother and I

and went to East Fremantle to start with and moved around into Swanbourne, and spent most of my primary and early school age at Swanbourne, in fact I was in right up until the start of the war. After six years in the air force well we just lived mainly in Perth, Mt Lawley, until I got

married of course. Our first home was in Inglewood and then went to Mt Hawthorn for twenty five years and came over here for the next thirty odd years. So that’s virtually where I lived. But I still call myself Kalgoorlie.

A few dust storms

throwing nasty boys into willy willy’s when the dust was going through the school, wet them down and throw them into the willy willy’s and silly things like that. Going into all the mining areas, Sunday school, happened to be a little trip out to some of the dumps, and the penny we got from Mum for the card. We would

split that halfpenny with one of the boys I went to school with, and we got his little card so he could get home with his little card.

Little Sunday school card, post card type of thing. So we would hand these to Mum and say, “Well here Mum we’ve been to church”. That was mainly all, digging my own mine in the back yard.

Oh yes, everyone did it.

As I say I was only five or six years so I had little memories other than that. Just a normal Kalgoorlie kid.

The only thing I remember is going to school, there’s a barber shop on the way the school, and he had a window full of gold nuggets, because after it rains, people in Kalgoorlie walked down, with their heads down

we had drains that deep, with their heads down, picking up nuggets up. Gold on the streets of Kalgoorlie. And he had this jar full of gold nuggets.

No. I was too small for that one.

Yes, it would be. It wasn’t difficult for me, except trying to keep away from my sisters.

Well I was a bit cheeky too.

Well I think I beat them put it that way.

He was in his sixties, he had lived a hard life. He came out from England eighteen round about

1880s, before 1880s, but came to WA [Western Australia] about 1880, and spent the next ten years chasing the gold. He didn’t like reef mining, he liked fossicking and alluvial mining. He went right up into the Kimberly’s reporting on the end of the Gascoyne areas and reported on the

huge metal bearing hills in these areas, which turned out to be iron ore areas. He reported this in 1881. And they walked all the way. And he came back to Coolgardie, and met up with a couple and went fossicking with them and they went going north west, into the never never,

he met his future father in law there. Who happened to be an apothecary from England. And they finished up in Cue and they had a very bad typhoid outbreak there and apparently my grandfather, being a chemist he was able to get some stuff in from Geraldton, and alleviate it a

little, not very much. Then he had a mining show at Cue, Cue One they called it and I think he got pretty wealthy at the time. He had eight years in all this and my grandfather decided to bring his daughter out from England, she was sixteen or seventeen and she came

out, and she landed at Albany and came up by train, she was seventeen I think, and she was taken to the city hotel at Perth. Strangely enough that was where my wife was conceived at the city hotel. So he

introduced her to my father and suggested he was quite wealthy man and he would be quite a good catch. And they married, this was 1898 this was, and I believe that he promised to take her back to England on a honeymoon, instead of that he took her up to Cue where he had this mining outfit. He also formed

a big camel team, and proceeded this is in September, October 1898 right across the country to a place called Lake Way, a huge sheet of water, and just south of what is now known as Wiluna. So that’s where she spent her honeymoon.

Oh yes he did. Then from there he worked out of Kalgoorlie, about eighteen miles east of Kalgoorlie and walked all the way back to Cue, this type of thing. He had a horse, but mainly to carry stores a lot of the time.

Well it was taking all the stores and all the mining equipment . These places were uninhabited. All these mining he had a showing at Lake Way, in shares with three other people, carrying on mining in there. They had to have stores and the nearest place in those days was Cue. And Kalgoorlie was just

starting. Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie but this was just after that.

He had a commission in the army, in the rifles I think it was. His father was an engineer from Wales. I think he had a reasonably good education, I think he might have been a teacher, I am not too sure.

Beg your pardon?

No. He was a bit old. He was involved to the extent that he was a recruiting officer in Kalgoorlie. He got a commission and was the Recruiting Officer during the war. And he always referred to getting post cards back from his boys, the

Kalgoorlie boys. A lot of them were killed.

Very little. I had too many women around me. I don’t know, I think there might have been a bit of a feud within the family, because he named me Cecil Lloyd Davies Edwards.

And I never knew I had that Cecil name until I was seventeen years of age. I think all the women folk ganged up on me and refused to call me anything but Lloyd.

Kalgoorlie. Mother brought the girls up, must have been pretty good because

during the Depression, they were all working. And able to maintain the home and my brother, Carl, he was eighteen months older than I was, and we used to go out in the bush country in Swanbourne. He was twelve and I was eleven. And we would go down and cut down a few trees for fire wood and kept the whole family going for

a number of years. We didn’t have gas in those days.

Well that was it. It was hard. But we managed alright.

I don’t think so, it only made us more independent I think. I mean Carl and I were out there chopping wood, we were kids mind you. And of our

boys chasing one of my sister’s, brought us a cross cut saw which helped us out. We were getting big timber in to the extent that one day, we had a bit of a low trolley we built ourselves, and Carl was in the pulley it up and I was behind pushing, it was on the gravel, and

my foot slipped and I pulled the cart down a bit and a log of wood fell on my finger. Split it right open. I was twelve.

Ouch. That’s how big the timber was. So we were, and I do think we looked after ourselves quite well.

No, she had too many girls. No.

We got on. We were in Fremantle straight after Kalgoorlie, and we taught ourselves to swim, dog paddling in the river until we finally found out there was no bottom. And here we were dog paddling it. That’s how we learnt to swim. We were reasonably proficient in it.

Water was our growing up because when we got back to Swanbourne, we just lived

lived on the beach. North Cottesloe, Cottesloe. Swanbourne, we didn’t like Swanbourne Beach very much, but we used to go down, walk all the way down. We spent most of our spare time down there. Burnt black we were.

Yes, I joined the Swan Rowing

Club. Because I was small, and I was ashamed of my size, and I used to go to gyms and workouts, and I joined the Swan River Rowing Club and was there for a couple of years. I was too small. I used to row. I was bowman for a lot of the races. After the war I went back to the rowing club,

but I was twenty eight by then. And did row and I created a bit of a history down there, I was in what is called the “Junior Eights”, got out of that and put me back to a starting point and I coxed the novices in the next race, so I was a coxswain and a rower.

Fremantle, went to Swanbourne Primary and that finished at year, I forget how that works, but I think I was eleven and then had to go to Fremantle Boys School for the junior what do you call it now? High School. Then went up the next three

years. So we used to travel by train to school. I was doing reasonably well at school, but when I was fourteen you could get out of school if you were fourteen, and I was out of school in March, before the final year ended.

Mostly maths, history, general right through. I left school when I was fourteen because I was fortunate enough to be offered a job in the public service for some reason or other. A friend of Mum’s had a bit of an inside there.

Had to because we of the

Depression. Had to bring some money in somewhere along the line. Not having what we called in those days the Junior Certificate, to say that you had finished your three year high school. And when you have got that then you move on to the senior high school. I think there was only one in the local metropolitan area.

Perth Modern School. We didn’t have many people going on. So when I went into the Lands & Surveys Department, I went in as a messenger, because I couldn’t get an appointment until I had my certificate. So I went to night school five nights a week.

Same courses. Maths A, Maths B, English, History, Geography, they were the five main subjects that you had to get.

It was hard.

Then I became a permanent employment public servant.

Fun and games. We had all sorts of things, we had

wood fires going you had to go down the basement and bring up a sack full of wood into the room, that was in the winter time. Then you had to run messages, buy them all morning teas and it was the start of an apprenticeship. In those days, to go through the public service, was like an apprenticeship. You started off small and then you built into various areas and gradually learned the whole thing.

So once I got a junior appointment I started to move around a bit in the department. We still had to advance further and another examination, which they called the final examination, which you had to pass before you got to age twenty one. If not you were kicked out. So again it meant virtually, we took it quietly,

about three years night school and that type of thing. One of the silly subjects was typing. We couldn’t understand that. I had a special friend, and that was our final subject. We got all the rest quite easily. But we went to night school for typing and we both got sick and tired of A S G F T F and doing it time over

time, and every time you made a mistake you had to go back. And my friend Arthur and I said, “We can’t stand this”, I mean we were eighteen or nineteen. So, there was a private library near where we were working and we knew the librarian, we said, “Anything under the counter”. Picked out two books from under the counter, made

arrangements with the department that after five o’clock when everybody knocked off we could go up to the typing there and use the typewriters there, and we got these books and just typed right through, word perfect at the end. And we passed our typewriting and then became classified state civil servants.

Three years yes. It could have been quicker, but we were allowed time so we took our time. In the meantime I was going out to do physical exercises, trying to build myself up.

Very rough and ready. Just a big room, at

in St George’s Terrace, no William Street, and was run by a chap called Reg McClessock[?], and he was very, very difficult, very hard, very tough man, he said telling everything your stomach muscles, he said, “The trouble with people is the stomach muscles, and they get all soft, and you have to get the stomach muscles and grind them round”.

He was a good man old Reg, he had us.

No he wasn’t, he finished up during the war, he became a major I think, he was doing physical training. Beating the troops around.

Oh yes, we had a good laugh. Getting stronger and stronger. See I was only eight stone seven in those days. Then another friend of mine we decided during the Christmas period, rowing had finished, we would try and keep fit and we would go into a boxing gym in Perth, and do a bit of boxing.

Fortunately the war came. The chap running the gym, I forget his name now, sparring around the place, he put me on the scale and I think I was just over eight stone, and he looked at me, and

he said, “Keep at it, keep at it and I’ll have you in the ring in three months time. You are giant amongst the little men”. I was really developed.’

Then the war came along.

Twenty one.

Bit around the place yes.

Our social life started at sixteen years of age. And we used to have dance halls, then churches had dances, we were in Swanbourne. There was a particular place in Cottesloe we used to go to. And get round, where all the girls

sat around the corner, and you went up, and I got quite chummy with one girl. Went with her for about three years or so, I was about sixteen or seventeen. We were still a bit wild. We used to go up to the nearest pub which was about a mile away and get a few bottles of beer. Sixteen and seventeen, no trouble getting beer.

Take back to the church. Our bottles cached outside and things like this.

Twenty one yes, but they didn’t worry about it.

So by that time I was eighteen or twenty, graduated and went to the city for the city dances,

and get back to Swanbourne and the group I was with, four of us. I knew Mum worried about me, one of them had a car a bit of an old car, and we would drive that back from Perth. He would drive out the front and say goodnight to Mum and hop out the front gate and into the car and down to Cottesloe and

we had a bit of supper down there, of course the pub’s closed at nine o’clock, but the Cottesloe pub was open, and the Ocean Beach our popular beach, that was open, we generally finished up at the Ocean Beach Hotel, mixed with a guy called George Brown, he was a mixologist. He had his cocktail menu. So we used to while away a few hours down there. One night, or

early Sunday morning it was, George came up and said, “We’ve got the word, just go outside and wait for about ten minutes will you?” So we went outside and up came the police cars and into the hotel, away then went and in we went and carried on. That was quite good. We had a pretty good, hectic life there.

At Swanbourne yes.

Oh yes. See when I first started my salary was ten shillings a week with a ten percent emergency tax deduction. But gradually, as each year went by, as I passed the final, what they called the final examination, I went on to the senior staff. The remuneration was pretty good in those days.

I was with the government, the Land & Surveys Department. I proceeded going right through each department, doing an apprenticeship going right through.

See I would

stay with one branch, say the Registration & Deeds Branch, that’s more legal. And then I would move into records, and by the time I was twenty one, my first senior appointment was in the Accounts Branch. That’s how you revolved around the place.

Oh yeah, had a good time.

No, you weren’t actually

doing accounting, you were doing just recording actually, you weren’t doing any accounting, at that stage of my career. And that’s where I was when the war came along.

Not very aware. At the time I had joined the militia in Perth, I was in the 3rd Field Brigade. And

artillery, and had a very good time three really. I learned how to ride a horse.

Make some extra money. And time, good training, still physical work and that type of thing.

I was only in there for eighteen months I think.

Well, we learned how to ride a horse. I was signalling to start with and heliograph and flags, and a bit of more code, not that much because of the telephone, I had my own horse. Being a signalman you had to ride a horse, but the others had to ride a horse and drag a leg.

I had a couple of camps at Northam.

We’d set up a field post, a telephone post, communications. They’d go down the field and fire a few artillery shells, and we’d have spotters and relay their message back and this type of thing.

Oh, I forget. Miniature toys they used to call them compared to these days.

Oh pre war, 14-18 war so.

Not in the militia no. A different crowd altogether.

Mainly from work didn’t really get to know that many, you only went once a week or once a fortnight, meetings and occasion camp. Bivouac at Guildford where they had the horse stables and you didn’t spend very much time with them. My association was with the rowing club and

offices I worked with.

Oh, immediate thought was I wasn’t involved until about October, about three months later I think, a month or so. I said I should be doing

something, I am in the army. I didn’t like the army. The air force had a bit of glamour attached to it, I’ll go down and enlist. They had an enlistment place in St George’s Terrace, and I wandered up there and wen in and there was some guy sitting at a table, and things all over here, wings or something

bands beautiful uniform. He looked up at me and I said, “Hello Arthur”. I used to work with him in the Accounts Branch. He said, “I am now either Sir or flight lieutenant and that’s how you have to address me. Sit down, what do you want?” “I want to fly of course”. He said, “No,

the flying courses are cadet courses in those days, no not taking anymore, the only way you could get in the air now is as a wireless operator”. I said, “Well that’ll do me”. I had to go through a bit of a test.

Just to see if you could differentiate between a dot and a dash.

Pretty basic. So, I signed

up then, and they said wait for your call up. It took another three weeks to get a discharge from the army, and it’s getting close to Christmas, and apparently they wanted to call me up, but unfortunately by this time I was in the yachting business.

Sailing of course, I had been in the Sea Scouts and

one of the friends of mine, he built his own yacht, quite a big one in those days.

Oh, 24 foot. Big keel boat, cabin and all. I'd been use to little skiffs and ...

Oh yeah, quite a bit of it. We used to slip over to

Rottnest on Saturday afternoons ... worked on Saturday mornings of course. In this boat, we'd slip over to Rottnest, and anchor down, and go down and catch some fish, and this type of thing. And at night-time, go over the island onto the reefs, and pick a few crayfish off the reefs, by hand. Illegal, of course.

Yeah. But this Christmas, we happened to ...

decided to go up to Lancelin, deep sea, we were the first of the ... water vehicle. Three yachts went up there. Beautiful going up, with an easterly, all the way, at night-time, quite easily. We anchored up, stayed there for, oh, about four days, then had to come back.

We didn't have navigation equipment. A compass. One of the yachties on the other boat, he was pretty experienced, he said, "Dave", he said, just go straight ... we had to tack back of course, because of the breeze, the wind had blown up, and he said, just go straight out, and as soon as you see the seas rolling apart, taking big swells, you're on the continental shelf. Go about, carry that course, and it'll get you to Rottnest.

And that's what we did. That's how we got back to Rottnest that night, and we got back home, and there was this call up I'd missed. So I went and told them. Next call up was late January, so ...

No, no. They understood the situation, it was... So the next call up wasn't

until January, late January, I think. Then they decided ... a small group of us, sent us over to the eastern states, to do the training, and join up.

No. I got to know a few on the train going over.

Alright. But we had sandwiches all the way.

Except when we got to Adelaide, about four of us ... one chap was in the know a bit, I think he'd been there before. He said "Let's get a taxi". Jumped train. We got a taxi, and skittled up, had a beautiful dinner out there, and rejoined the train at about midnight at Mt. Lofty. So we went AWOL.

No, no. So we got to Melbourne, and we were transported in a bus, or a truck, and taken out to a place called Laverton.

About four days, I think, all told. We got to Laverton, in this open truck, and lined up all outside the Laverton ... all these guys in blue overalls and blue berets, saying " You'll be sorry, you'll be sorry".

There. Well, you slept on the floor, to start with. Palliasse, that's a hessian sack filled with straw. We didn't get any uniforms for about three weeks, and that hurt us, because, if you were in uniform in Melbourne, everything was free. You'd go to the races for

nothing, and ... We didn't have much money of course.

Used it up. West Australians were noted for ... later on, when we were ... weekends, we could get away, and ... because Melbourne was six o'clock closing. Strangely enough, the

West Australians seemed to know where ... there was a little town pub, I think it was the town hall hotel, and you could go there, and go up the dining room, and get a plate of bones, soup bones, or something, in front of you, and you could stay there all night, drinking. The we became members of the licenced fiddlers club

Yes, Fiddlers club. Of course, we used to go

there after hours, and ...

Only a uniform. We'd be up there, and ... strange little fact, we were all West Australians, any new face would come up, and "Where you from?", "Bunbury, WA". "Where you from?", "Perth, WA." Where are you from?", "Kalgoorlie", no "WA", just Kalgoorlie. We had a good

time. Training was a bit ... from Laverton, we did our drill training and that. We had to go to the Melbourne Technical College, for the preliminary Morse code, and basic electricity and that type of thing, radio. The accommodation there was very poor, it was an old

technical college down in La Trobe Street, and it was on the floor again, no cots or anything ... cold water, no hot water.

Just the uniform, no equipment.

Blankets, yes. One or two blankets, but ... they were ... We soon got the wake up, we'd nominate one of our

friends, who had a straw draw, your turn. We'd give them a couple of shillings, and he'd go into the Federal Hotel for the weekend, bed and breakfast, five shillings, I think.

He'd go there, have his room, and Saturday morning, we'd all go up there and have our hot showers.

Yes. We had to take the oath in Laverton in Victoria. We weren’t sworn in in Perth, that was definite. That was when I got my number, it was 1186. Citizens air force.

Permanent air force status.

No. Just a bunch of us taking the oath at once. Just a crowd, I think about twenty of us doing it at the same time. We were mass produced.

So.

We were in Melbourne, Laverton Melbourne. And after our initial training we went to Melbourne Technical College, and our billet there, I think I mentioned before was in the old Technical College in Latrobe Street Melbourne, and that was the HQ [headquarters] for all the

training units at that time. And the accommodation was very poor. Sleeping on the floor with straw mattresses, no hot water. The messing facilities pretty bad and the mornings, you went on a parade at 8 am and then they marched you up to the Melbourne Technical College, and you spent the day there doing Morse code

and basic radio electrical maintenance and this type of thing. Morse code was actually drilled into us, just drilled and drilled and drilled. We got a bit mad of course.

Well we had tapes going on all the time,

and occasionally they would have a manual operator giving it…and they had tapes going all the time, and you were taking this down. Built up from ten words a minute and gradually building up and up and up. I am jumping ahead of myself now, but the actual training was horrific. If you got up to fifteen words a minute, once you hit that mark, you were reasonably good.

If you didn’t go over that mark you wouldn’t go any further. You couldn’t go higher than fifteen words a minute you were immediately taken off the course. Once you got over that mark and we went up to twenty five words per minute. In three or four months I think it was we got to twenty five words per minute.

Plain language and code.

Code was taken down, in four groups of letters A-B-C-D etc. And in plain language as a whole story. You had to get twenty five words per minute in plain and twenty two words per minute in code. Mainly because of the speed of writing.

You have to concentrate and you go a bit troppo or mad. And

when we came out walking down the street at night time and we see these flashing neon lights and we would be decoding the lights, “De da de da dit”. This is how we were.

Reached saturation point.

We were there for about two months I should imagine, and of course this was a big training depot and new people were coming in all the time they had to pick out the oldies, and gave us a living out allowance. My particular friend I had been with al the time

Jimmy Grocock, we got a billet down in St Kilda, right on the beach. Board and bed and breakfast, no board and lodging. We had a room in this two storey mansion in St Kilda, and we used to get on the tram into Melbourne and get on the cable tram from Bourke Street down to Latrobe. If we were asked for a ticket we would say, “Well we had one yesterday,

but we haven’t had the results”. Sort of thing, never paid of course.

Private home.

I wouldn’t know the name now. This is way back in 1940. But we had to be down at the training depot at 8am, we had to report for duty at 8am

every morning that was our, we had to report for duty 8am every morning, a parade down there and they would march us up to Technical College.

No, not very much. Except one morning I got up there and I had laryngitis and I couldn’t answer the roll call. So I was told to stand out and wait for sick parade. I stood there practically all morning, waiting for sick parade,

all the rest had gone to school. They came about twelve, I was getting hungry. I knew what the food was like in the mess, I had to pay for it now. I wouldn’t buy that stuff. So I went up town a bit and got some sandwiches. Apparently while I was there the visiting doctor had come in and they had a sick parade. I was nearly on a charge for disobeying a lawful command etc etc etc.

fourteen days confined to barracks. They put me in an ambulance and took me out to a tent hospital in Melbourne there. I stayed there for a week with laryngitis. The balance of my detention was having to stay back one hour after

school every night. I wasn’t keen on discipline of course. I got two distinctions, disobeying lawful commands, twice.

They were all civilians at Technical College, they were very nice. Very

kind. They weren’t very severe. We got on well with them, just friends actually.

No, Morse key.

The Morse code key. It’s just a little

thing, piece of metal on a hinge and it had a button and every time you pressed the button down it made a sound, a dit or a dah. You held it down longer and and “Dit, dit, dah, dah”. And that’s the Morse code key.

Oh very simple, except you had to exercise your wrist, you didn’t just press you had to use your wrist.

We set out at twenty five words per minute that way.

That’s is wireless telegraphy. That was my mustering, wireless telegraphy. We learnt some of the basics of radio, wireless mechanics, how it worked and why it worked,

what these little bits did and another little bits did, so if something went wrong in the air you would get an idea how to fix things up. It wasn’t very intense that part but. Still very important. They had special mustering, they had what they called wireless mechanics to work on them in the ground, and it was just an

emergency sort of thing that you learnt the basics of it, so that if something happened and you could fix them up. You couldn’t do soldering or anything like that, not in the aircraft.

Four months in Melbourne, so we moved out to Point Cook for practical training now.

Point Cook they had about twenty little huts all round the place, and each hut was a separate unit had its own call signs, and each hut had its own call sign, and your call sign was this. And three of you were allotted to that hut and you had to maintain communication throughout all these twenty huts, and know how to call someone up and say well he can’t answer

me, pass me on to someone else, pass me on to someone else and things like this. You did all the whole actual working telegraphy in this little commune of ours. Then we had to do the flying training. My first flight was in what they called a Dragon Rapide

aircraft. I got in there and up we went and the wings are flapping like this. And we had some Greek boy in our course, first time I have seen a dark man go green. The wings are out there flapping. We had about, we carried about ten radio sets up there, and had to work each and every one of them sort of thing.

But we didn’t have very much of that. Then they had the old Anson. We passed that area, we were allotted to a specific pilot. He took us up in an Anson, “You are on your own now”, and you had to do an exercise, telegraphists exercises, sending messages, receiving messages in the air and that was it.

We were there for another three months, overall nine months course, nine to ten months course.

Daily routine, oh it was just get up, attend parades, go to school, break off for lunch, that’s the pure routine, break off, afternoon parade to dismiss, back to your

huts.

At that stage I hadn’t become part of one. Our first posting, my frit posting was to a place called Parkes in New South Wales and that was air navigation training, astro training for pilots and navigators.

And we were staff operators and you went up there the pilot and the training navigators in this old Anson, and you just maintained radio watch, in case anything happened, any messages, like that. Normal communications, air to ground for three months I think, yeah, three months.

Oh hut, reasonably good, got beds this time. Food was excellent.

Nothing. I wasn’t a navigator. Purely wireless telegraphy.

No. We had

direction finding on these aircraft. A little lead up on top of the aircraft, and you tune in to a normal broadcast station and whiz it around until it came to a certain air spot. Tell the pilot to keep that course and you will hit that town sort of thing, but that’s about all.

We didn’t have any fixed crews, we were just duty staff. The whole

telegraphists, about a dozen of us, we were just on duty. Whichever pilot was going it was your duty, turn. You go up with him. So there was nok crewing at all.

Oh, occasionally, we didn’t have transport or anything like that in those days. We didn’t see very much of Parkes at all.

In March 1941. Yeah, ’41.

Well, a friend of a friend that went with me to Parkes, a fellow by the name of Warwick Carmody, from Bunbury, he got posted to 14th Squadron as well as I did. So

we were on the train and we got to Kalgoorlie, and most of my friends were in Kalgoorlie, my brother, he had his car, and mother and sister, and I encouraged my co-friend Warwick Carmody to jump train at Kalgoorlie. Spent a couple of nights there, and my brother was coming up to Perth and he had a

Vauxhall, new Vauxhall car with the dicky seat. Beautiful little thing it was. Warwick and I got in the dicky seat, and brother and his friend got in, and instead of Perth, drove us out to Pearce, and we presented ourselves to the guard on duty, he didn’t know what to do with us, because we hadn’t gone through the normal procedures. We finally went and

reported and they signed us in there at Pearce. This time the accommodation was beautiful, single rooms, big brick building, polished floors. You had to do all the polishing, beautiful. We were just normal, our ranking was AC1s [aircraftsman one]. Like a private. In our mustering in we were AC1s. Wireless telegraphists

air against us. So we weren’t actually air crew. In fact, 14 Squadron were flying Hudsons at that time. And the air crew of the Hudson was a pilot and the 2nd pilot. The air gunner was the flight Engineer, so he wasn’t air crew either. He was musterings. Engineer air.

We were Wireless Telegraphists Air, and we got extra pay every time we flew, and this went on for about six months. And no about three months. By this time the Empire Training Scheme first intake been through training and posted out. We got a bunch of sergeant wireless

air gunner’s in the squadron. The CO [commanding officer] said well he had to employ these wireless air gunners as sergeants, so he made them wireless operators because he didn’t want to lose his engineers. Because we were operating in Esperance and Albany and instead of taking a vast number of crew, they used to take their own crew down. Maintenance crew

down. So our first trip out we went with these trained air gunners, and of course their pass rate was much lower than ours, and when we went around they knew how fast we went and we knew how fast ground were, and we used to play games. And they sent out a message to us they were deployed out on a job and they got a message to return to

base. Not one of them picked it up. So they were grounded and told to do some more Morse code training. We were reinstated and apparently no one under the rank of sergeant shall fly. So the CO then gave us a gunnery coursed on station. So we did our gunnery course on the station. Must pass that and

we became active Sergeants.

Mainly on the turret work and Browning automatic guns. We had twin guns in the turret, so we did a lot of ground staff with camera guns and then air to ground, air to air training.

We did a pretty heavy, very, very heavy course in gun maintenance. So if one of your guns broke down in flight, you had to be able to fix it up. And our sergeant, armament officer, sergeant who was doing all this, he made us really know the guns. We got to know the Browning automatic very well.

Training?

Well mostly we were operational at Pearce and our main job at the time was to provide escorts for troop ships coming, convoys coming through from the eastern

states. A lot of recognisance work. Anti submarine patrols and as I say convoys, anti submarine, everything else. And we’d go down to Esperance and pick up a convoy coming through, and we would take them right through to Fremantle. And once they got to Fremantle, we would just take them out the next day

out from Fremantle because it was virtually clear sailing from them onwards.

Generally have one fighter and seven planes going out.

No form, no each one had what they called a datum point and they would start there and had a course plotted, and they had to do that plotted course. See

we might be hundreds of miles ahead of the convoy. Not right on the convoy all the time, just spread all around almost down to Antarctic. When we would pick him up. Like one time we went out and couldn’t find the Queen Mary, and there it was in between two waves.

See we were down about eight hundred feet of course, if we had been higher we would have seen her. Huge seas down there.

Mine? Radio watch and now and again sometimes in the turret, we switched around, because the

radio is very demanding on the ears. Specially the type of radio we had, lot of static and you had to have the ear phones clamped on you, and with a lot of static going, it was very tiring, but we did change over gunnery and just maintained a radio watch, and you get the messages from base what to do and

where to go. Change of plan or anything like that. We retransmit back them, when we reached a certain point retransmit back, such and such a point, so they kept a watch of us going right through.

Oh, the wireless operator only had a little viewing mirror, window, couldn’t see very much.

But pilot and second pilot would do all the searching and gunner. Sweeping around at the rear. Just visual, trying to get visual appreciation of what was going on.

We had little twirks about that one.

Oh yes, we were knew the mine sweepers were out there, we knew there were the Germans had their special boats camouflaged boats, raiders, we knew they were in the area, we had to be very

careful of what we were trying to find. We knew the raiders were in the area because there was plenty of communication around the place.

Well I didn’t know anything about it, but they would information in from Indonesia and Singapore

and all these places, and they knew what the Germans had put out and where it was, they knew the speed of their boats and where they would be operating. They would have a report of a boat being sunk here, and they would know the speed of the boats and how far they would be from that particular point. So conjoint references coming in all the time about their positions. Would indicate reasonably well where they were.

No, no. We were on our own fixed references. Because we wouldn’t be able to, we didn’t have interpreters, or anything like that on it, decoding people. No we didn’t have any of that, we couldn’t break anybody else’s codes. Didn’t have the equipment for that.

What gunnery? Air to ground where you would have to do strafing type of job they would come in, do a dive, in conjunction with bombing they would do a dive bombing exercise, drop their bombs down there would be targets on the ground and as you pulled away you would be chasing the targets.

Then air to air, they had a what they called a Fairy Light bomber aircraft, wasn’t much good for anything else, but used to tail a drogue behind it. And you would come up there and they would have bullets, painted bullets, and you fired into this drogue and they could measure how accurate you were. And that type of thing.

In the air, well they had ground plotters on the ground, to start with, but in the air you had bullets painted a certain colour, tipped with a certain colouring, and when the drogue came up they would be able to tell how many hits you made on the drogue. With the colour of what you are using. One aircraft would have green, blue tipped

or red tipped.

Mine? I was reasonably good actually. Strangely enough I don’t know why. I think I was top of the class.

I wouldn’t know now. You only got the result, satisfactory, satisfactory, satisfactory. Very hard to get below satisfactory.

You could always do better.

Well the main thing was in the breach, you could dismantle a breach, belt stoppage, you would have to take open the breach up and take out the cans and release the stoppage out there and

reset it all up again.

Well, we had good maintenance on the ground, we had armourists in the squadron. And they maintained them, it was their job to maintain them. It was our job to fix them if something went wrong in the air, because you didn’t have very many tools you couldn’t clean the gun barrels or anything like that.

But we knew how, if we got a stoppage what to do. So we had twin Browning guns and these 303s, peashooters.

Nine months.

Well mainly the most important one historically was the searching for the Sydney survivors. The Sydney was sunk on

the 19th November. 14th Squadron was a fully armed squadron, and from the 8th November onwards

was the exercises they were doing all over land. They were doing formation flying, training, air to ground bombing, air to ground gunnery, instrument flying all this type of thing, for a couple of weeks. Now they were fully trained and we don’t know why. It is believed that the Kormoran was going up our coast. We don’t know, during that period of time.

But then the Sydney was sunk on 19th

We were deployed on the 24th November,

to look for survivors. So we had to fly up to Carnarvon, and on the way up we were doing sea patrols out to sea and there were about seven aircraft involved, and we were flying two flights a day out of Carnarvon, on various segments, patrol segments, we each were allotted a segment to search in, straight out from

Carnarvon, south and north and we were flying two flights a day, and spent about eleven hours out there and you had the earphones all the time, terrific static. But you couldn’t take the phones of because one of the aircraft might have spotted something. And the first one we sighted about the second day, we thought

we found something, but they were Germans. The only things we sighted were Germans, life boats. All in Carnarvon, ‘round Carnarvon, we were there for six days. Just two flights a day.

I suppose flying time and hours, we were flying about six hours a day, no eleven

a day and we would be going out to three hundred miles out to sea and in that area like this. More like four hundred miles out to sea. But we didn’t sight anything but German life boats. Not a thing.

Oh yes, very, very

disheartening, but you had to do it. Looking for Sydney signs.

Well the 14th Squadron was doing exercises over land.

Mainly instrument flying, formation

flying, air to ground gunnery, air to ground bombing, overland of course, everything over land.

In land from Lancelin, we had our own bombing range out there.

We wouldn’t do very much; we would just do one and come back. Eight or nine, ten days, nine days I suppose.

We were always doing training exercises, keeping our skills up. If you were involved in recognisance work, the CO would say you had better get some more formation flying training. You had to keep your skills up all the time.

Well a lot of it was aerial bombing, because you only bomb over land because we had our targets over there. Air to air gunnery is always over land.

I think we would have found something.

If we had have been I think we would have, that’s if we had’ve been. But quite a lot of theories came from out of Singapore way, so we have to believe that part of it.

No, no I didn’t give it a thought.

Although on the 4th December, some days beforehand, midnight on the 3rd actually, there was a flying training school at Geraldton, and they were flying, training the pilots, and an unidentified aircraft was sighted flying over

Geraldton at midnight. Now 14 Squadron was deployed about eight aircraft on the 4th November to look for a suspect raider. So we went out there and did quite an extensive search for a possible raider, but we couldn’t find anything, so

Lot of people queried the fact that this aircraft flying over Geraldton was a bit of a hoax by the instructors up there, they wanted to do a bit of midnight flying themselves. But unfortunately for them, a friend of mine, much later years, in fact a neighbour two doors up was one of the trainees at the time. He said,

“It’s a fact; we were doing circle and bumps at night time. One group up in the air and we were on the ground waiting for them to come in and we were going to take over”. And our flight commander said, “Look up here boys, look at this aircraft.” One, two , three, four, five, six. He said, “I have only got five and there’s six up there.” Eric Furley was my friend, he was one of the ones that

did, so it did happen.

Definitely an aircraft over Geraldton. Unidentified.

No. As I say we challenged quite a few, and they came up to our challenges.

We didn’t find anything untoward there.

What for the Sydney? We were so dog tired, and as I say we were flying eleven hours a day, six days and everyone spoke with a lisp to me, because I had these phones on all the time, and we were just damned glad to get

back.

Just normal duties, we didn’t do that much work at Pearce, because I was there for nine months and I think I only flew one hundred and eighty hours. Five hours into one hundred and eighty, about thirty odd trips, you didn’t do a lot of work.

Very few duties. We had batteries running the radios, and they all had to be charged, kept charged, and sometimes a lot of the duties was battery attendance and you had to go down

there six o’clock in the morning and make sure they were all on charge, we had little two volt batteries and you had to keep them charged. That was the main duty and the other was to keep out of the way.

They were all twenty four hour amp batteries, so they were all twenty four hour upcharged and we had quite an array of them because

we had about twenty one aircraft, and they all had radios and they all had these batteries to be kept up to date, so if you wanted to get out of commanding officer’s parade, you had to become battery attendant. I was battery attendant all my life there, in 14th Squadron. I was telling Anne years later we went up to Darwin

they had a big parade there in late 1900s to celebrate Darwin and this type of thing, no it was 13th Squadron’s 50th Anniversary or something like that.

Yeah. And, I attended a commanding officer’s parade up there, the first I did in my whole six years.

Oh, that’s ritual. Commanding officer’s parade once a week I think they used to have it. They would get the whole squadron out there and they would play music and bellow orders, and march up and down and the CO would then go round and have his inspection. At Pearce we had this beautiful single room

apartments. And highly polished jarrah floors and jarrah cupboards. The CO would come round once a week, and with his gloves would go round the top of the cupboards, and looking at your floors, and the only way you could get out of that was to put up a sign, “Night Duty, Flying Duty”. He would leave you alone then.

Oh, none of us ever disobeyed that one. We had to get down on our hands and knees and polish, we had big tins of grease or something, or wax and polish these floors. But they were beautiful ablution blocks and they had to be kept nice and clean. No, we were very comfortably housed at Pearce.

Very good, very good.

It was mainly standard food, very little fruit, but mainly fresh food. They were quite good cooks. Good average cooks and that type of thing. No we did very well I think.

See, you are talking of guns, shooting pretty fast, and fed from a belt, both guns, you have got two guns, and the belts are coming through and sometimes the belt got a little awkward and you get a jam, and once you get a jam you can’t fire, and it cuts out all your electricals and all this type of thing. So if something goes wrong with the electrical situation you might have

to rejoin a couple of wires to get the electricity through and this type of thing. Mainly it was jammed, bullet jam was the main problem, you had to know how to lift up the catch and take out all the mechanism and release the jam. Sometimes they become almost unserviceable, sometimes you just couldn’t fix

them. Happened to me once, later on in 13th Squadron we were out on a patrol and I wasn’t on the guns, I was on the radio at this time, and the air gunner was called through, he said he couldn’t get the guns working. When we go out we do a test fire, and get it working. So Clive Forman, the

pilot he knew me, we trained together when I was doing training at 14th Squadron. He said, “Go down and see what you can do”. I went down and it was a mechanical thing I couldn’t fix. So I said, “Clive, I can’t do it”, he said, “Anything I can do”. I said, “Well I can pinch one of your front guns, the mechanism out of that. The left gun from the turret has gone so I will take something out of your right hand gun and

take the mechanism breach out of that”. He said, “Alright go ahead”. So I scrambled down, it was very hard to get at, but I got the breach out and got the gun working, that’s the question you had.

Very few times, very good machine the Browning.

No, Hudsons.

Not when you are in radio, because to see anything in front of you, you would have to get out of seat and look over the pilot, you could see something slightly to the side, if you can see in the turret, if you can see everything, you passed, because you had a complete

panorama.

Very little. Actually the Hudson was a very roomy aircraft in the body of it, but the wireless operator was just a little desk like this, very small, and you were cramped up like this. But the body of the aircraft where the bombs were underneath,

it was pretty roomy there. And the turret was reasonably roomy.

You carry tins.

Well better than what we had in the Liberators later on.

We had little phones like this out the side

windows, the exterior. They were good. I was on one exercise or operation, and I was in the tail turret, and I was tracking down a zero coming at me. See we had plain glass into the, armour plated glass, and I was tracking it down, and it got down to the armour plate and glass has clouded over, I was

rubbing the thing, trying to clean it, lost him altogether. If I had been an American I would have shot him down. And I traced it down to these outside phones, and there is a trail going back like this up on to the gun turret, so we cut that out, we called them the pisser phones.

Which program?

That was round about April,

February I think 1940 I think that started.

Well it had to be get the numbers up. Because they suddenly realised they didn’t need the extra training, the top level training for a lot of the pilots. They went through about twice as quick, they didn’t spend so much hours in

to start with, and gradually increasing the hours later on and as I say the air gunners and the wireless, everyone got used to them not being up to twenty five words per minute and so everything just toned down a little. It was a good thing really. Well the number of people they got through was

amazing. I don’t know whether it was our group, but it took us about nine months to go through one course, whereas they took about six weeks sort of thing. Three months.

Oh no, no, no. The training was adequate for the situation, and

far superior to the American training. They are far better than the Americans got. Very, very poor the Americans.

I was talking in the training area, the practical area later on, totally different.

No. Oh one perhaps silly things, one of the people that travelled with me over east to start with, and on the train, he jumped train at Adelaide to have dinner with a chap called Eric Geddes. He went to Laverton at the same time I did. But I didn’t

hear anything of him, he was in a different mustering, and I was at Pearce late ‘40s, and going back on Sunday night, we were able to catch the late night but Sunday nights, whereas all the trainees had to catch the bus on Saturday nights. The trainees had their white flash. There was this one guy there on the bus with this white flash, and I said, “Hey boy you are in

trouble, Eric.”. “Oh yes Lloyd, Eric Geddies”. I said, “What are you doing?” He said, “I went to Geraldton”. He was mustered in catering. I think he used to work for the Swan Brewery beforehand, and he said, “He re-mustered into air crew”. And he was one of the lowest of the low AC2s [aircraftsman two]. I said, “You are in trouble boy, I will tell you what,

as soon as you get Monday morning, report to sick and tell them you had a bit of tummy trouble and you couldn’t catch the Saturday night bus”. I didn’t see him for some years later. I said, “How did you get on?” He said, “Oh you bastard, you know what they did to me? They took me appendix out. I had to go back a course”.

No, well I didn’t actually hear, I think I was down at Albany at the time.

I know we were down in Albany doing convoy work, and sorting out there

We had outstations at Albany, Esperance. We used to work from there. We used to go practically down to Antarctica. From Albany, and I didn’t hear about Pearl Harbour I don’t think. All I know is I had a sudden recall, I was down there about December at Christmas

time, and I got a sudden recall back to Pearce. So I had to go another flight, be transferred back to Pearce. And I was posted overseas. Didn’t know anything about. On an overseas posting. This is Saturday, no Sunday morning, and I think I had the rest of the day

embarkation leave. Sunday.

And they said, “We’ll give you transport back to Perth”. And I said, “Okay”. And the air gunner that was with me at the time, he said, “What’ll we do Lloyd?” “Come on I know where to go”. Straight down to the OBH [Ocean Beach Hotel] it was always open.

We spent the whole of Sunday afternoon down there.

No, no my family were up in Kalgoorlie by this time, and we’d had a pretty hectic time that Sunday afternoon, and had to go through a medical, the following morning, and away we went up to Darwin, en route to Ambon.

Well we all wanted it, put it that way. And that’s what we were there for. We knew we weren’t doing very much in Pearce. But we were doing a job properly, but it didn’t seem like a war effort.

Oh yes, Japan had.

No I

don’t think it came as a surprise to anybody really. We knew why we were going up there, because there had been trouble, the whole thing had been reported coming through. See 13th Squadron and 2 Squadron were Darwin based, they had advanced air bases 13th Squadron was on Ambon, part of 2 Squadron was on an adjoining

island of Garu, and the other part of 2 Squadron was on Koepang. And they’d been over there three months beforehand. They knew it was coming, and though when war was declared with Japan, if you find anything Japanese, sink it. That was the answer,

One 2 Squadron pilot, by the time talking land time and northern territory time, I think three hours after Hawaiian time came through about the attack on Pearl Harbour, it was heard picked and the order gone through and

this pilot took off at free dawn on that very day, and found a Japanese ship and bombed it. So I think he was the first one to bomb anything.

No, no thoughts at all.

No.

Well I went up to Darwin, well I went to Ambon first, overseas I was only over there.

Yes, I was only in Darwin for three days.

No, preparation, preparation for the air craft to take it over and loading it up, because they were running out of supplies

of course and that type of thing, but I got the wog up there, the fever and said to all my new mates up there, we all had a beautiful little cottage on stilts just out from the area there.

It wasn’t malaria, dengue.

They said, “Don’t go to the hospital report sick. All that they will tell you to report sick and take Aspros and drink water”. Which I did and kept flying.

Yeah, it’s only three

days, but.

Oh just a very high fever, hard fever, aches and pains that’s all. You got to drink plenty of water and aspros. One of the pilots I came up with from Pearce, Norm Lamb, I was crewed up with him, now he was 2

Squadron and I was 13, but that didn’t matter. Did matter later on but away we went to Ambon, and landed there and stripped and we had a brand new aircraft.

Hudsons, all Hudsons. And as soon as we landed, the CO came over and said, “That’s

your plane over there”. Ours was Number 121 and that was Number 67, old as the hills. And he gave us a job to do, a recognisance job out straight away. Because we had got up there in the afternoon and did an afternoon recognisance. Got back that evening and there’s this beautiful new aircraft, just a tail

showing. On a constant air raids by this time. The Squadron lost about eight percent of aircraft and crews.

In about three weeks. Yeah. So we were no longer attacking the Japanese we were just doing a monitoring of their movements now.

Because you just couldn’t fly against them.

Well the Hudson aircraft was pretty slow, and didn’t’ manoeuvre very well and the Japanese Zero was the best in the world at the time. We had no opportunity to really combat them, and by this time

all the hard work had been done by the time we got up there, and so we were more less just doing a recognisance and monitoring twenty eight thousand invasion force coming down and so I think they had in mind at the time, they had to get all their ground staff out of those islands back to Darwin, I didn’t know that, it was purely conjecture on my part, monitoring the Japanese fleet coming so I could

arrange for the evacuation of all their ground staff. So we did about three days there.

You monitor the position of the invading forces.

The pilots position have their islands all over the place, they knew where they were, and

so you would be there where you shouldn’t be, and so you wouldn’t know. We kept out of range reasonably well because we knew we couldn’t, we had no aircraft left, only what we had, because they had strip was always under raids, Zero strafing air raids. And that’s how we went on

for the first couple of days, and then we had to get a replacement aircraft. They worked out how many aircraft they needed to get their ground staff out, and so we were transported across the bay to a flying boat base we had there.

On Ambon. On the other side of the bay, and transported there and we stayed there the night on the beach, no covering,

no protection, we were not allowed to have quinine or anything in those days. No protection whatsoever, so we were on the beach all night, and took off first thing in the morning in a flying boat to take us back to Darwin. They got back to Darwin about midday and picked up another aircraft and went straight back to Ambon.

Just ordinary huts,

builders huts, they weren’t very good but you didn’t need anything in the tropics, no problems there.

Primitive yeah. But at that time you just couldn’t leave aircraft on the ground, you had to get them off, and you would take off early mornings and come back, land just after lunch sometime.

Mid afternoon, refuel and rearm if you have to. And then take off on another recognisance and mainly to keep the aircraft off the ground. We would land back late at night, evening, and mess is all shut up because of black outs, hardly had anything to eat for about 4 days.

Well the cooks and everyone air raids were on and they vacated the whole air strip, and everything and went to their trenches and that sort of thing. No one would hang around air strips at all.

We had rations but not very much. But

one day I came back, I was feeling a bit hungry at this time, fortunately we had a hot lunch, they provided a hot lunch for us on the strip, red kipper herrings left out in the midday sun. We got back that night, and some of the WAGs [wireless air gunners] I saw there, they went across the bay to the city, and had a

day out over there on Ambon. One of them boasting about WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK y WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK y bye bye, I said, “Did you bring any back Merve?” He looked at me. I said, “I haven’t had anything to eat”, “Chooky WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK y bye bye”, he said, “Little boys selling their sisters. Chooky WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK y bye bye for man”.

Chooky WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK y

‘my sister’ bye bye man. The boys were selling their sisters.

Yeah, so did I. I was really hungry at that time.

Mmm?

About every day they were strafing. That’s almost constant.

There were only small flights of Japanese, because there was only one strip. Sometimes there was about seven or something like that. We got used to things, even in the few days. We were down on Namlea I think

one day at the time and one of the air crew had been there sometime said, “You better come over here and look at the air raid”, I said, “Was there an alarm?” He said, “No, look at all the natives, they know, they are running”. That was our air raid alarm. So we just walked over to the slip trench and

watch the air raid go by.

Oh reasonably careless as a matter of fact. It was all a game, at that moment. We didn’t really realise how serious it was. I don’t think so, I didn’t anyhow. We weren’t briefed to any great degree. The air crew. Pilots were briefed but the air crew weren’t briefed to

any great degree.

Heresay, they weren’t very nice people. We knew that, so we always had that in mind. We always knew the Japanese didn’t like air crew, particularly.

Because we were bombing them.

And, very few air crew were taken prisoners.

We don’t’ know, because this was pretty early in the period. We are talking only about three weeks after Pearl Harbour, three to four weeks.

Amazing what the grape vine is. Because they had a reputation in China and Korea as well you know. They weren’t very popular over there. But these things just grape vine filters all the way through.

Well originally we were told that they had poor eyesight and they weren’t very good at this and not very good at that, the air craft were old fashioned. We were told all this, and it wasn’t until I just started to attack our own aircraft and saw the capabilities of their Zeros and we got feedback from them, that these are

vicious little beasts and they were. We had pretty good intelligence on Ambon of course. You see, as I know this from

August 1941 we had listening posts, listening to all the Japanese communications, diplomatic, civilian, army, air force and navy. We were listening posts, we had a special one in Darwin, we were listening to all that was going on and we had special officers, trained officers telegraphists that could take down

the Japanese signals. Now our Morse code has twenty six syllables, A, B, C, D, but the Japanese, it’s forty six, and they couldn’t be trained Japanese so they were trained to the effect that, “Dit dah dot dash” was A in our language, “Dit dah” in Japanese something totally different, could be a ring with a

dot in it. Symbols, so we had to learn these forty six symbols and the various combinations of “Dit dahs”, and I was taking all these symbols down, and that went into a special group, who transferred those symbols back into Japanese, and then decoded because they weren’t using very many codes in those days and taken down because we knew exactly what they were doing.

They knew Darwin. The Japs are going to bomb American shows, and they knew all that since August 1941, they had the whole area, we had it, the English had it, and the Americans had it. They all had these listening posts. So everything the Japanese had they couldn’t have a decent code because they had no

communication how to express Darwin in their own language so they had to Darwin would be DWN. In their symbols. So as soon as they got DWN they knew they had got Darwin. From that they could break their coding down. That’s how it was. So 2 and 13 Squadron were deployed in those areas well before Pearl Harbour. So the

hierarchy knew about it.

Well that’s what the world’s opinion was, they are all short sighted, and they soon got the

shock of their lives.

No. They did I think because they believed it. Not as they knew it, as they believed it. Just a general white person’s Asian mentality, they don’t know anything, I think that was it.

Oh, very surprised when we saw their aircraft, the Zero.

Well yes, they came zipping in at Namlea they came zipping over the aircraft and because they were down there and they gave us a bit of an aerobatic display, and we were looking at this and the speed they came, and

they were reputedly the best in the world at that time, better than the well, Spitfires were never a match for them to start with, and the Kittyhawks could never match them, they could beat them, by manoeuvres, but they couldn’t match them in air to air. They could beat them by numbers and method of

attack.

Couple of times.

We got fired on, on numerous occasions and fortunately we were fortunate right throughout, except one particular night, this goes back, the story goes back,

to round about after the bombing of Darwin, I had malaria then, and on the night of the 19th, I was put aboard an aircraft and taken down to Daly Waters, about three hundred miles south, they had a hospital there, the old hotel. And they were reforming everything down there,

2 Squadron and 13 Squadron and unfortunately this aircraft missed it. I don’t know very much about this, heresay, severe storm, electrical storm and lost all his instruments, or the effluxion of time that he knew he had overshot Daly Waters, knew he was running out of petrol, and knew he had to make a forced

landing somewhere, the co pilot went down and of course the Hudosn had a navigator’s dome just under the pilot’s seating, he went down there, this was about three o’clock in the morning. He went down to see a suitable place to crash land, and the pilot just started to eased down, didn’t have an altitude and all of a sudden went straight into a lake,

and fortunately the Hudson going down dropping altitude, because it’s landing way, the landing altitude and just more or less landed it full speed into this lake. It was only about two feet deep it just aquaplaned, saved us, instead of crashing down we just aquaplaned into

Well he had overshot his mark and he lost all his instruments and he was running out of petrol. He knew his time, at the time, he had so much flying time, and he was coming up to his four hours, he knew he would be either had to try and crash land

rather than crash.

Well safety wise, three hours up and two hours down.

He only had enough petrol to get him to Daly Waters, three hundred miles, he wouldn’t have very much because he had sixteen passengers on board so he had to cut down weight, and only refuelled,

they weren’t allowed very much leeway in their fuelling. They had to be pretty precise on their navigation.

The pilot couldn’t do anything else, he knew he was going to run out of petrol. If he ran out of petrol while he was in the air he knew he would lose control of his aircraft.

He just had no control he would just crash.

When they go from point A to point B, they say well that’s so far so much distance and we’ll give you

that much petrol to get you there plus say so much for leeway of say ten percent and supposed to be spot on, navigators and they couldn’t afford to use petrol unnecessarily, there was still a shortage of petrol up there, you only got enough petrol to get there and a bit of leeway. And he knew how much petrol he had and how far he he could go in time, because

of so many hours

The preparation, well it starts off after we returned from Darwin with another aircraft. Which I think was necessary because we needed enough aircraft to get off 13 Squadron off Laha, Ambon and we needed a lot of aircraft to take off, the

ground staff from Buru or Namlea airstrip. Apparently they worked out they needed three aircraft for each job. But we had to go back to Darwin and get the sixth aircraft.

Well it was, we had to be flown out by the flying boat to go to Darwin. We got back in the afternoon and we did

a recognisance when we got back and the next day we did another full day’s trip on recognisance and the afternoon trip on that second day, instead of landing back at Laha we landed about ten o’clock at Namlea, and it was then that I realised or that

afterwards what happened on that night of the 29th January, the three aircraft on Ambon had loaded up all their ground staff and loaded the aircraft to the hilt, twenty six passengers, two of them took in these aircraft, and they took off up to midnight on the 29th January, and during this time we

are on survey, or recognisance and we came back to Namway, we landed about ten o’clock at night at Namway, and it was then that I knew that we were going to get the 2 Squadron off, and there were three aircraft allotted to do that job. One of the aircraft was coming in and was damaged, and the pilot was Mickey

Finlayson, no I forget his name.

I don’t know what happened to his tail assembly, but that all that all had to be reassembled. So we were scrounging ‘round for another broken down aircraft on the strip, and the tail almost re set up. It’s strange that the CO of the squadron at the time told me later on,

he was talking about it, of course when he landed at ten o’clock we had to, everyone was getting in and demolishing everything they could see around the place, and pulling parachutes open and things like this. And counting later on things that had happened he said, “It’s amazing, I thought I knew all my ground staff, then I saw this guy, fixing a tail up”.

He said, “Who are you?” He said, “I am the cook sir. That’s how it was everyone was in”. We spent the nights helping to demolish everything about the place and we got the ground staff off and except for a rear guard party which the CO [Commanding Officer] Titch McFarlane,

So, Titch McFarlane remained behind with the rear guard party. We got all of 2 Squadron off just with two aircraft and the leader of 2 Squadron a chap by the name of Law Smith, he took off first with twenty six on board.

Mickey Finlayson in the 2nd aircraft with the repaired tail which was done with fencing wire and a few things, he could only take sixteen, and we came third with twenty one bods, twenty one evacuees. We took off at 4.30 am on January 30th. And the 2 Squadron rear guard, they tried to escape but were caught.

All executed. McFarlane’s rear guard party, he managed on about an eight day trip through the mountains and countryside of Garu Island to a specified rendevous point and they were picked up by a flying boat later on. He got back and his rear guard party got back safely.

Yes. There is a

diary published elsewhere in the peace, that’s a copy that you have got there, you could copy that if you want. It was quite a credible piece of bushmanship to get through, and courage. I can’t speak highly enough of the CO Titch McFarlane, and he only passed away a couple of months ago.

No, Canberra.

We hadn’t heard from them for about two weeks, so we knew something had happened. I think it was a chap by the name of White, I am not sure. But they were all executed.

Oh yes, considering the size of the aircraft and its carrying capacity, and because you are taking off on short, not so well made strips, and the aircraft I was in I had to stay outside to strip everyone down to a pair of

shorts, shirt and no shoes or anything, and packed them and had to clamoured over them for a position on the radio. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Tell the pilot he has still got his navigation lights on”. Looked out the window and there were trees each side of me. I said, “Sit down”, we got off

alright, I didn’t tell the pilots he had his navigation lights on. I believe the Japs landed there at eleven o’clock that morning, so it was pretty close.

No.

Back to Darwin. Essential people these ground crew. You couldn’t run an air force without them.

Well put it this way, the Hudson bombing capacity, it could carry more, but it was recommended that it could carry a thousand volt power and it used to put twenty six men together and work it out yourself. Quite a big difference, they did struggle to get it off the ground.

It had a pretty fair go all the way, once we got it airborne it was alright. Getting airborne was the problem.

We were overloaded to glory put it that way.

Well not very much, we just had to sit there and concentrate, you were going overseas,

nothing to do nothing to see, just hope and keep your fingers crossed and you’ll get home.

I don’t know I can’t recall anything about it, just that we landed. We were dog tired of course and I think we just collapsed in the old accommodation,

overtired that was all. That was on the 30th January 1942. We got back.

I don’t know what happened to my pilot, Norm Lamb, he went somewhere else, that’s right he was 2 Squadron and I was 13 Squadron. So

after that I was allotted to 13 Squadron, pilot and crewed with him for the next twenty odd days.

We still we had 2 Squadron on Timor, at the time Koepang, and we were doing flights daily flights over to there, with stores and doing

recognisance of course, and going into land at dusk, because they were on a bombardment too, air raids, we landed at dusk so the aircraft wasn’t on the ground, and we’d unload the aircraft with what stores and supplies we had and we would take off first think in the morning back to Darwin. The following morning, pre dawn. Very, very

unfortunate.

Koepang we would do recognisance back to Darwin.

Then back to Darwin.

Oh they are all organised, you would have one recognisance path, and another

aircraft would have another flight path, a recognisance is based on a triangular basis.

Yes, they covered as much ground as possible.

No. The Japs weren’t chasing us out at all. We knew that. The only danger was that if the motor packed up you only had sea underneath you, which is a definite problem.

But we got through alright on that one.

Just to map and keep on getting information or relaying information, trying to keep tab on what the Japanese were doing and how far they were going and because they were on Ambon and on Guru, we knew they were coming for Koepang, so we had to keep a watch on it.

Movement yeah. Unfortunate the current one of those trips we had taken off at dusk, and at the end of the strip was a huge black cloud. We knew the dangers of huge black clouds up in the tropics and the pilot did

take off and did what we called a “split arse turn”. Winged down, full power and whoosh around, and I am in the turret at the time, and going back there and another aircraft taking off there, and I was in the turret when I could see it coming down, and he wasn’t so lucky, and he hit the cloud and all of a sudden, a mass of flame. Just like that.

Oh yes, full of electricity, very powerful.

I wasn’t prepared because I knew what he would do, I could see it myself. I thought he’ll get us out of it.

Oh yeah, you had a harness on.

Oh, just with a belt. But you go

with the plane like this you see. You are not harnessed, or have seat belts, and the pilots don’t have seat belts. The radio operator didn’t have any seat belts. In the turrets you are jammed into a little seat and you have got controls around you. And you only go with the plane.

No, no belt.

You are just up and down. You rolled, you rolled with it.

If you are dive bombing, you get braced for it, but if he makes a sudden dive bomb exercise without too much pre warning, you find yourself floating up in the air with

nothing underneath you. You are left up in the air a bit and come down with a wallop.

Yes. Up until the 18th we were doing recognisance flights. The last ones were about the 17th

I think, 17th February1942. I was called out by the pilot, allotted the job and went down to the strip, and I was doing my own pre take off check of the radio, and the other gunner was there doing pre checks on his gun, and my radio the battery was a bit flat, and the pilot said,

“Lloyd, that radio okay”, I said, “I think so, once we get in the air it will be okay,” he said, “Are you sure now? Because if it’s not we are not going”. I looked at him, the other gunner looked at me, “Ooh what are we in for?’ And I don’t remember anything else after that. Next thing I know we are landing at an air strip in the Kimberly’s Drysdale River Mission. Dirt strip of course, and that strip was

our station strip if we were going west. We would stop there refuel and go west. It was a commonly used strip. The next thing I recall was helping to refuel the Hudson aircraft at Drysdale, and I know I burnt my wrist, a pretty bad burn on the hot cowling, and I can

recall the monks coming over and saying their radio was not working, “Could someone fix it for them?” So I went across with them and I don’t know if I fixed it or not. I remember that. Matter of fact it’s in the Monks War Diary. So, then woke up the next morning the palliasse I was sleeping on, we slept under the wing of the

aircraft. Palliasse was sopping wet right through, the straw was set right through, and I can’t recall anything after that until about seven o’clock that night, that was the 18th. And I was brought in sick. Went up to the hospital and the orderly’s took my temperature, and immediately rang the mess

where the medical officers were attending to their messing duties, having dinner, and he came back and they told me to give you a couple of aspro and come back tomorrow morning and report sick. Next morning I did as I was told and I had my wrist had been bandaged, and the air raid took place. So

had to evacuate the hospital into the nearest single line trench, which was one single line trench like this, I said, “Ooh ooh this is danger”, because I had seen the Japs go up and down those trenches. I went down there and the dive bombers came in and this type of thing.

Oh about twenty others, all sorts. There was a

sergeant, medical orderly there, and he was starting to panic a bit, so I thought I would give him something to do so I said, “Look could you tie this bandage up on me? It’s come loose”. I think it quietened him a bit. Fortunately the way the Japanese were coming in with the dive bombers and strafing. They were coming straight across the trench because we were sheltered a bit by the hospital and they were coming straight across.

And they went like this, dropped a couple of bombs either side, they didn’t affect us at all. That was over and done with then. So after they went everything had been blown apart on the air strip and went across to our accommodation hut, and the raid started again, the

heavies from up top come over.

About one and a half hours. And I know I wouldn’t go back to that trench. Most of them hopped the fence then out of the strip, which is quite high a boundary fence. After the heavies had gone over, my co WAG at the time Paddy Willis,

said, “We had better go down to our flight control office down the hangars to see what is going on”. Couldn’t see very many people around, the whole hangar was ablaze, the things like this, we knew we couldn’t do very much, aircraft all round us blown to bits. So we thought the HQ building,

was some distance away so we thought we had better go across and see if we can see what sort of officers around the place, see what’s happening. We saw some guy in uniform he turned out to be the Methodist Priest. He was telling us all about these bombing, and he was there and he watched, “Absolutely amazing, amazing. Here’s this dive bomber coming straight

down on the castle”, because it was a bullshit castle, “Straight down on the castle”. And he said he looked up and there’s this bomb hanging from the aircraft, and hadn’t released. It must have been the atmosphere above the castle that stopped it. He said, “Well they have all gone out in the bush over there somewhere I don’t know”.

So we started to proceed out there and we got to the gate, and by this time there was some warrant officer there, disciplinary warrant officer, he was one that dobbed me in at Point Cook. We got on well together. So he said, “Oh no, here’s a round of ammunition for your

38”. We all carried revolvers. Revolvers, 38, he gave us a spare round for that, he said “You’d better assemble over in your huts, we are reorganising everything now”. And so Paddy and I walked back to the hut, and some of the boys, WAGs realised the sergeants’ mess had been blown open and helped themselves to a lot of bottles a beer.

Immediately offering me a beer. I took one sip and immediately passed out. I had malaria.

No.

I woke up after that, that’s where I woke up at ten o’clock at night on a stretcher being loaded into this aircraft that crashed.

But I did find out later in another book by Roris [?], I think the author is, “Nor The Years Condemn”, his title is. And he’s writing about the Americans on the American side of it into the real war effort in Australia. And at one stage he’s writing about,

see prior to the bombing of Darwin, there was American troops and Australian troops were being taken to Koepang as reinforcements, as a convoy about three cargo of troop ships troop carriers. American destroyers going to reinforce Koepang, and they got almost there

they got hit by an air raid, pretty heavy air raid. I don’t think they suffered any damage, but they realised they had to go back to Darwin, so they turned around and going back to Darwin. He said one day, out on 18th almost into Darwin, and he said they had seen another

Japanese spotter plane earlier in the day and said, “There’s another plane coming from the west”, all a jitters here it is, fortunately it turned out to be a camouflaged Australian air force bomber. It came in and flew shotgun over the convoy in lazy circles. Then I think that was the aircraft I

was in, I am not sure. All coincides. Back from Drysdale Mission doing another, and I think our duty was fighter cover for this convoy.

Well I had this malaria, I had a black out and I don’t know I just can’t recall them. I had a complete blackout.

I had the tremors, the real tremors when we were lost in the Northern Territory, after the crash, in the aircraft, we were lost for three days and three o’clock every day I just laid down and they finally got us back, actually,

what happened was the rest of them heard some cow bells in the night time. They managed to souvenir some bullets from the air craft, tracer bullets. They sent off a few shots and the native boys raced back to the homestead, Newcastle Waters, and he came out then with his

Retinu (?) to see what it was all about. And he took us back to the homestead and we communicated with the air force and flew a plane out and sent us back to Darwin, Daly Waters. I was in hospital then for a while.

I might have been I don’t know.

Oh yes. I came to sufficiently shocked to come out of it. Because malaria only hits you certain times, about twice or three times a day, but once that fever goes over you are back to normal sort of thing.

Well I had three weeks I think on Daly Waters, and I spent about a week in a hospital, they filled me up with quinine and things like that. But I had gone past the serious part and I was on what they call light duties, go to hospital, report in the morning, light duties, fill your day in as you wish.

Well I picked my own, I went down the air strip and this time aircraft were coming up from south to go to Darwin, and they landed at Daly Waters, to refuel and go on to Darwin. And I just set myself up as part of the fuelling party. And one aircraft came in it and it was the 14th Squadron aircraft I could tell because of the

insignia, and pilot got out and chap called Clive Foreman, I had flown with him at 14 Squadron, in fact he was flying with me when I was doing my gunnery training, and all that type of thing. He knew I had topped the class in their gunnery. And I was talking to him and I fuelled his aircraft and he was

off to Darwin, of course, he’s back the next day, and I said, “What’s going on Clive?” He said, “I landed during an air raid and I am looking for a crew, will you come back with me?” I was six stone seven pound at the time. And I said, “Too right, get me out of this while”. The only washing we had was a cattle trough.

“Get me out of this hell hole”, I didn’t even get a medical clearance. He said, “Do you know of another WAG or place?” I said I teamed up with this young chap, he’d been posted, he’s just straight off course, and he’s posted he didn’t know where, he had to report here somewhere, and no one seems to have taken an interest in him and I said, “He’s been helping me with me refuelling, he seems to be a pretty practical

young man and down to earth”. He said, “what do you think of him?” I said, “Well, I think he will be alright”. Clive said right he’s one of my crew. So we flew back to Darwin as a crew, he said, “I want you in the turret Lloyd”, I said, “It’ll be okay”. So then we got up there and the 2nd pilot was up there at the time, so we formed a crew then, and immediately

by this time we were doing raids on Koepang.

I didn’t see Darwin at all. Never went into Darwin. The strip’s a fair way out of Darwin, and there’s nothing in Darwin to go to.

We knew the place had been bombed and completely ripped

apart. And so I think we did three, six operations.

Didn’t think anything of it, it’s just war. That’s all, we were horrified of course, that

this could happen of course. We had all been in the thoughts, we had adequate air raid warnings, which we didn’t have, but we did have but something went wrong. We were being bombed on the Darwin strip all the time as well you know, just wasn’t Darwin, we were still subject to bombing. Being bombed at the air force

station, we were still subject to Japanese raids. It was in between these raids we we would go out and bomb Darwin and Koepang and around the place and start the attack.

No. You were there you had to do a

job and you do it the best you can. I didn’t have those fears, I don’t think. I knew I was worried, but under tension.

No. Americans had some Kittyhawks squadron, they tried to

take up, well they had a flight up at the time. The three flight aircraft and they just got blasted out of the air.

Just those three. Americans, they tried to get off the ground and they just got blasted, taken out straight away. As they were taking off.

The official report was originally fifteen, that was quite correct. Service personnel, the Americans later came out and said they lost a hundred and twenty of their naval forces there, they lost a cruiser, I forget the name of the ship they lost in Darwin

Harbour, but they lost about a hundred and twenty. So the official figures had to be upped to take account of that. Because the Americans had denounced that. There was no attempt to calculate the number of civilian deaths, they knew by the post office, they knew how many was killed there, but there was a terrific number of other people in Darwin, casuals,

wharf labourer this type of thing, and there was no way of assessing just how many civilians were killed that day. Some estimate six hundred. They couldn’t get all the bodies out of the harbour before the crocodiles got to them. Others were just blown to pieces, couldn’t be recognised. It was just real havoc. The harbour.

By weight of bombs and number of aircraft.

Darwin was more heavily bombed than Pearl Harbour.

In figures?

I could look them up, but they are in plenty of publications on that . I will give you one later on.

We were glad to get back to have a shower I can assure you of that. We did these about six, five attacks, attacking, operations, I forget bombing this and bombing that, hand

bomb, dropping bombs.

This was from the main air force from Darwin itself, not the civilian strip, the 13th Squadron air station, about seven mile out of Darwin.

Later on we did.

At any rate this sixth trip, it was a special night bombing raids on Copenhagen, and a couple of very special ships were in there, according to the intelligence, and they wanted them taken out. I believe so it was a flight of

three aircraft, twp from 13 Squadron and one from 2 Squadron. Three flight attack at midnight. On Copenhagen on one of the ships. This time we didn’t think the Japanese had night flying Zeros. And the other gunner that I got in to

join us. He had approached see Lloyd, see if I can take the turret for a change. I said okay. I spoke to Clive and said, “Are you happy?” He said, “Yes”. So he’s sitting in the turret night time, reasonably safe, and we got attacked by night flying Zeros. The 2 Squadron aircraft was shot down, the pilot and co-pilot were able to escape

the other two WAGS [Wireless air Gunners] were injured and taken prisoner, and later executed. And the third aircraft they got badly hit, aircraft hit not badly, but one of their gunners said he thinks he shot down one of their Zeros. And he got shot in the bum.

We got attacked apparently, and our gunner got killed. Mortally wounded. Our aircraft were badly shot up, our aircraft, and the pilot flew it back to Darwin and he had means of keeping it on navigation course was changing speeds of motors and like this, and he wanted a bit of extra

height control. The second pilot and I raced down the back and give it a bit more weight down the back, this type of thing. We limped into Darwin about three hours later. But this gunner died in hospital that night. It has always been on my mind that one.

Unbelievable. Because I was

responsible. That’s what I thought at the moment, should have been me not him.

It took me a couple of weeks to get over that one.

No he died in hospital. We knew he was very badly injured. We didn’t have any first aid aboard. We didn’t have anything like that. All we had was a bit of a bunk

to put him down on. I had to pull him out of the turret. And get him onto the bunk and the second pilot came down and did what he could to him, but I had to man the guns until we cleared of Koepang, and that’s how it was.

Right through the groin. He was sitting right up there, and it came through there sort of thing.

No not that one, no. But as I say we were not expecting these night flying Zeros.

Actually three days, and on the third day or the second night I think it was, we heard some cow bells in the distance, and we had retrieved a rifle out of the aircraft with some ammunition,

so they loaded it up an fired a few shots in the air. Unfortunately, I am not quite sure, they didn’t know the SOS, it’s three shots for SOS and I knew that, but I couldn’t tell the, so they fired off several shots into the air, and the Aboriginal drovers saw these scenes, panicked, or I don’t know whether they panicked or not, but raced straight back to their homes,

pastoral station, the boss, Newcastle Waters Station. He came out the next day with his own truck and that type of thing, and worked out how everything was and took us back to his homestead and got the news through to the air force and they sent an aircraft in and picked us up.

I think it was on the fourth day went back.

I had some quinine then, when I went back to Daly Waters, that was the first time. It cured me up pretty quick, it didn’t cure me, but cleared it pretty quickly, and so Daly Waters, I was in hospital for about a week and then went on light duties.

I took on the job of refuelling aircraft, Daly Waters is a transient stop, aircraft coming south and coming into Darwin, and they refuelled, so I made meself one of the refuelling parties. Just to fill in time.

Very quiet break, only for a short period of time though.

Oh yes, on the way back, had several hours of doubt.

It was touch and go all the way.

I managed to get through, because the Japs knew our frequencies and they played games with us.

They’d hear me call Darwin and they’d hear Darwin coming back, “Go ahead”, and they knew all that, and as soon as I started pressing the message through, they’d start with the herdie

gerdies, interference. And it took me about half an hour, and Darwin realised what was going on so they kept a very close watch on it, so as soon as the herdie gerdie’s went, and I waited about five minutes, and I just pressed one key, one letter out and as soon as got that through bang it came, and I finally got the message through, that we were shot up and

needed. Ambulances, we needed emergency landing procedures, it was all in code, we had a code and that’s theo nly way we got it through.

Virtually.

Oh yes.

Ambon, somewhere like that. Anywhere, they are very clever people you know.

A friend of mine, he’s a very, very good operator, he is a rigileer, an amateur operator, and they got a signal through, coded signal, return to base, and he gave it to his skipper and he said, “I don’t like it”, and he said “Why?” And he said, “Well they didn’t have a rhythm that I knew.

It mightn’t be our signal”. So he stayed out till dusk and came in then. And the Japs had come in. They sent the return to base signal. Oh, no they were clever.

Our crowd could do it. We had a special

group to do, we could read Japanese symbols, they had forty six, whereas we had twenty six, but we had special units trained. I think I mentioned this before, you want it again.

The rhythm of the key. I think it was a bit of stacato, whereas ours was

smooth roll and he got a dubious about it.

Yeah.

It’s all in there. He’s passed away now that man, so you can’t confirm it, I am telling lies.

Ambulances were there

the strip was cleared, all I wanted was to get back and lay down and go to sleep. Tired out, it was a very tiring situation.

I should imagine so, because it was a personal one not actually, so personal to me.

I considered I was responsible, I should have been in that turret that night. I told it before, but when my pilot I was with, and I was refuelling his plane, and he was coming through to Darwin, a month beforehand

we stopped I knew he had a 14 Squadron aircraft by the symbols, and when he stepped out I knew he was one of my old pilots from 14 Squadron, Clive Foreman, he’s passed on too. I was speaking to him and he was back the next day and I said, “Hey what’s going on Clive?” He said, “I landed during an air raid, I lost both my WAGs”. That was his introduction to the war.

So, “I am looking for a crew, do you want to come back?” “Too right, I want to get out of this hell hole”. And, he said, “Do you know any other air gunners around?” I said, “I have got a young chap here that’s with me on my refuelling, he has just been sent here, he doesn’t know to which squadron he’s going, he doesn’t seem to know anything about him, so I got him to help on the

refuelling to fill in time”. He said, “What do you think of him?” I said, “Well he’s young, he’s straight off course, he seems pretty practical, cool, seems to be cool in the processes”. He said, “Will he come back with me?” I said, “I’ll ask him”. And asked Dusty, “Do you want to go back?” He said, “Yes, too right”. So, we flew back to

Darwin and this pilot’s second pilot was in Darwin at the time too, so we made a crew, a twelve man crew. The first trips I was in the turret all the time. And Dusty said to me, “Lloyd, could you ask Clive if I could take over the turret will you? I just want a change”. Fair enough. So I asked Clive and he said we were going out that night, it was a night time show,

we hadn’t been contacted by night flying Zeros, we didn’t think they had them, and Clive said, “Yes, he can take the turret if you are happy”, and I said, “Yes I am happy”. So that’s when we went over, it was a midnight strike on shipping. We didn’t think there were night fighters, and then we got

jumped, they did have night fighters. There were three aircraft in bold, one got shot down, the pilot and second pilot managed to get to an escape point, but the other two WAGs were injured and taken prisoner and then later on executed.

There were two others, it was a flight of three. And we went in and dive bombed these ships

and this is when we got shot up, and we had what you call a tunnel gun, you wound it down, and I was on that. After we finished our bombing run, there was a call made through, “Everyone okay?” And Dusty wasn’t answering, so I got back and went to the turret and dragged him

out and knew he was badly hit, and laid him down, we had a bit of a bench there and I had to immediately get back into the turret, because it was our only defence.

Nothing then, it was night time, it was just in case they came at us again. We had to have protection, and the second pilot came down to do what he could.

We didn’t have any medical supplies, we didn’t have anything on board.

Nothing.

That was just standard practice. Later on they started bringing it in but, not in those days.

Safety features? None. Only parachutes. That’s all.

The pilot sat on his. Ours was just tossed away on the bench, we had the harness on and we would just pick it up and clip it on.

Oh, we went through, we had procedures laid down, on how to pull the rip cords out and timing, count four,

something, count ten.

We all knew not to say. Name, number and nothing else. We had escape points. We knew if we were shot down here, we could make it, we could try to get to a pick up

point, because we had our flying boats going in at night time at these spots, and if you didn’t come back well, they’d get information where you were so they would say well he’s there, so he can get to there. So you always had that in the background.

Later on we had a map, we had

silk maps, but we just relied upon the natives there to get you through.

Well we were confident in our own ability. Put it that way. If we were shot down at Koepang, if you could get away from the area, you were reasonably sure of connecting with some happy, friendly natives, and you would just tell them where to take you. They would gradually feed you right through the

chain. Actually we had our own troops over there. Commando unit was quite a few of them, that was an army unto itselves, messing around with the Japs, and going here there and everywhere. So we are reasonably sure, confident however.

No, no, no.

Only what you took yourself. I never took anything, cigarettes perhaps.

Pretty hot on the ground, but when you got in the air, because you are up at ten thousand feet sort of thing, it gets quite cool up

there.

We used to carry winter flying suits, but we got by and didn’t carry very much, some used flying boots, but I couldn’t stand those.

Full length, fur lined, down on the ground, on tropical turf,

no way.

I never met any of them. I wasn’t in that position.

No we didn’t, I didn’t have time to even meet them, I was only over the for eight days and

flying most of the time.

We had a break from operations for about a week and then we got another air gunner allotted to us and then

one day, and he was to fly with us the next day, and he got killed in an air raid that very day, that same day. So we had to scrounge around and get another replacement. And the air gunner that went with us this time, wasn’t good at it, but he filled in. But that was the last trip I made with this particular pilot. He was sent

down as an instructor to the operational training unit at Sale, at the time. I am quite sure he was a little bit broken up, he had lost one, two, three, four air crewmen, in a very short period of six weeks. He went down, most of the pilots of that day, as soon as they did a bit of a service, they all went down as trainers, at the new operational

training unit as instructors, but he went down a little before his time.

Get as far away from each other as possible.

Yeah. You didn’t want to see anyone. Just get by yourself. And then our first

flight after that event was a simple little thing, doing a search for an aircraft that had come down somewhere in the Northern Territory, to do a search and I just got in the turret and screamed me head off and that was it.

No. Then Clive went, and this time we were posted up

north anywhere. And in those days you were posted individually, not as a crew. Now just about this time, all the crews were coming up from south, fully set, a crew of four and they came up. Now all the pilots I had been flying with they had gone south and about a half a dozen

of our group was to leave us, then at 13 Squadron, and they didn’t have pilots. Crews coming up all fully manned, and we were all milling around we were then in a bush settlement.

We were in a bush settlement about thirty miles out of Darwin, called Hughes Strip, pretty primitive and nothing to do and going a bit

troppo and the other five of us had been up in Darwin and Ambon for nearly months, and I was pretty new as I had only been up six months. So the CO called us together and said, “Write me a letter and tell me what you want to do”. Because it’s terrible nothing to do in that area, the tropical area in Darwin.

So the other four or five said they had had their time up there and would like to be posted south. I was a bit cheeky, and asked to be posted to a more active squadron. They went south and I stayed.

Well, two months later I was transferred to 2 Squadron.

Nothing. It was a beautiful spot, Berry Springs, occasionally we used to go swimming and that type of thing, very, very soul breaking. So I got this posting to 2 Squadron then.

Idleness

yeah.

Yeah. We were getting odd flights occasionally wanted to see if we wanted a more experienced air gunner to go with the others, we were getting the odd flights, but not many.

Timor, Ambon, those places.

Bombing. Attacking, attacking. We are attacking now. Gone past the defenceless stage.

Well you see for us to attack anywhere, it took us at least three hours overseas. Twiddling your thumbs for about two and a half hours, and over the target for ten to fifteen minutes. Another three hours

back overseas, with the thought in your mind, will those engines stand up to it. If we get shot down will they break over land. We knew we wouldn’t be taken POW [prisoner of war] and so we didn’t stay over land very much, but if we were down on the sea, it would guide us well.

Mostly shipping and

air fields and that type of thing.

Well you wouldn’t as a tail gunner, because you were going into a target, you might see it as you pulled it away, the pilot, or second pilot or navigator, they are looking straight at the target, and the wireless operator, he has a very little view of

anything. He has to stand up and look over the pilots head to see anything. But you know you are going in because he gives you, “Going in, going in”, sort of thing.

Depending on the target. See parts of Timor are quite mountainous. I think we had to go

up over Bomana and we were coming in at eight thousand feet and at Bomana it was about seven thousand. The object of this particular area was we knew it was a Geisha HQ [Headquarters]. So we used to bomb that every so often. One aircraft went a bit low and got its own bombs back at him.

He came back with half his bottom ripped out.

Much further south, about twenty miles further south at a place called Batsfa.

No. It’s just a field, an air field.

Air base. It was also a stopping place, civil airlines used to come through there as well. They did a lot of work 2 Squadron. I was only there for two or three months I think, but.

Very good. I am still flew with them on the

Liberators. I have got a photograph of the four of us, we went on to Liberators. A nucleus of a ten man crew.

I flew with one particular pilot, Dick Overhoy. He is a DSC [Distinguished Service Cross] man, Richard Overhoy I should say, but I knew them when 2 Squadron used to fly with

13 Squadron, and I knew we would get their top gunner in 13 Squadron, when they were in Darwin itself, I knew him Strambini, and Dick had a navigator, they didn’t have second pilots, they had a navigator. So I flew with him out from Batsfa on quite a few occasions, and then I got a sudden call back to 13

Squadron.

Wireless operator mainly, because he had Cec Strambini, he wouldn’t go on the wireless. He was a gunner, nothing else, he insisted on that.

Not common, but later on they were mustered purely as air gunners some of them. They didn’t do wireless at all on the bigger ships. Liberators and that because we had Liberator fort turrets.

Less use?

All the same because

it’s all a very small enclosed space, because you can’t dodge from the bullets wherever they are coming from.

The tail turret?

Oh yeah, it is because in heavy aerial activity, fortunately we didn’t have isolated air attacks, not violent full squadron attacking.

Because the Jap was very, very cautious man, and he wouldn’t attack from behind. He’d always attack coming in on the (b… UNCLEAR) because he knew we had that turret. They didn’t take those risks.

I didn’t

know it. When I got back there, interviewing the CO, Wing Commander Holdwitch, I said, “Well look sir, I have been up here nine months now, in this area and if I haven’t got a crew to go with, I will start asking to go south”. He looked at me and said, “You are in my crew”. So I crewed up with the CO Holdwitch.

Nice chap, nice chap. He flew hard, when the job was really hard or technical, he would fly but he wouldn’t do the normal recognisance and daily jobs that we used to do, but if it was something serious he would go. So I didn’t fly much with him.

Not particularly because they are more or less single aircraft missions, not interrogation, but doing a particular report on activity going on over there. When aircrafts used to creep in and see what the aircraft were down there, and this type of

thing.

Just the one aircraft.

Yes.

Oh you had to just take it back in memory and if you wanted to report it you would do it on the air, and if not, if it’s information he takes it back to intelligence he’d take it back himself.

I can’t recall going on any group raids or anything at all.

Mainly in Timor, we were doing over Dili and this sort of place. Because we had troops over there we had to try and keep, and we had to be kept informed of what their activities were because they used

Timor as a base to serve Burma and that group. They are serving Burma right through Timor and like that. If we got some information we passed it on to the British HQ in Burma, that such and such is happening. That type of thing, so I had a very lean time with 13th Squadron.

No not really.

Oh, they all had certain things. One friend of mine, especially at Ambon, he had been there since September the year before, and he had been all through the heavy stuff, all the dangerous stuff and he reckoned he used to have a nervous widdle on the front nose wheel of the aircraft before he took off.

But the one time he didn’t do it, he wasn’t in the crew and they got shot down. That made him all the worse. Actually he got malaria, he was down with malaria at the time. We went allowed to take any malaria, quinine or anything like that.

They reckoned it upset your flying capabilities,

quinine. Reflexes and.

Oh no, no, no. It was down. But if you were taking malaria down, quinine to stop malaria, apparently they said it affected your flying, your reflexes, your handling

and that type of thing.

No you get it from the ground.

We were staying, living there.

In Ambon.

No Ambon was the place.

Oh, not particularly, mostly they came from all parts of Australia, and there were very few WAs amongst them. This chap used to do things to the front nose wheel of the aircraft before he took off, he was from Bunbury, and as a matter of fact he was on the same wireless course I was. So I always kept in

touch with him. A few down at the air force Memorial Estate. About three ex 13 Squadron I keep in touch with, locally. I did belong or I do belong to an association in New South Wales, I belong to an association in Victoria too, 2 Squadron. An

association for 24 Squadron and association for the B24 Group. Belong to all those Associations, but haven’t had any real personal contact with any of them.

Reasonable. Very reasonable.

Well, mainly

tents. The messes and that were more or less lean to sort of thing. Real bush situations. But 13 Squadron, that was different to Hugh’s, we used to build our own miah miahs much like the Aboriginals. Just out of what we could pick up.

Unfortunately, see

in the early part the air force was responsible for its own vittling. And we were getting reasonably good supplies in. But later on after the raid on Darwin that all cut out and we were under normal army rations, supplied by the army. And of course they fed themselves first.

For about six weeks we had pickled pork, we had rice as a breakfast, fortunately we had sweet rice, they put a few raisins in it and rice as a vegetable for dinner, and pickled pork. That went on for about six weeks.

You start eating rice and pickled pork three times a day.

Yes, it does.

No it was just overall, you just change your life style that’s all. You just got sick and tired of it, what else is there?

You live on it by growling, that was your entertainment.

Well mainly we would try and get rest a lot of the times, and just mess around, you didn’t have anything else to do. We had entertainment groups that tried to get things going, we had films at night time. We see time and time

again. “The Gentleman Boxer” was one of them, we saw that about six times. We used to laugh at ourselves, and we would go to the open air theatres, sitting on whatever boxes we could get, and you would have your ground sheets over you, hats on pelting rain, couldn’t hear a word, watching the film going on, “Gentleman Jim”,

pouring rain. But that’s how we lived.

No, not very much. We did a bit of gambling, , housey, poker just to fill in the time.

Well we didn’t get much pay, still in the pay book,

We used IOUs. Wasn’t very serious. I don’t think, later on we had one serious gambler amongst us all, but most of us were just play acting.

Not particularly.

I went back to Hughes

strip with 13 Squadron.

And we stayed there until January the following year.

Well I was posted south, and I was given a train ticket and I was supposed to travel over land from the end of the railway line and then with whatever transport down to Adelaide and

cattle train back to Perth. So being what I am I jumped the train at Batchelor and I had a distant relative in the army, he is a cripple but he happened to be in the army, and he happened transport officer, sergeant at Batchelor because there were a lot of civilian transport going through and that type of thing. And I had previously rang him up so I

jumped ship at Batchelor and AWOL [absent without official leave] of course and stayed a week with him on Batchelor, on army rations and going down to Pearce time and time again, and he got sick and tired of me so he wrote me a ticket out on a civil air line back to Perth.

Much earlier.

Went out to the depot at Wembley as it was in those days, the embarkation depot, and the adjutant there said, “What are you doing here?” “Here’s my movement orders”. He said, “But you shouldn’t be here for another six weeks.

Six weeks.

Well I had to go down, after you have been on operations, you generally do a year down south to recuperate sort of thing. And I was posted as I say, Operational Training Unit, that’s training crews that have been formed into flying a

particular aircraft, and I was posted to that in February 1941 to 1943,

Sale in Victoria, and later went up to Bairnsdale, transferred to Bairnsdale and I was posted there to Ballarat, they had what they called there a Navigational Wireless School, and training Nav

Wireless for flying the Beaufighters, which is pilot, rear gunner, navigator, a new aircraft coming in.

Wonderful aircraft. I never flew in one, but I saw what it could do.

Oh just wasting time really,

just filling time. We were actually flying as wireless operators, staff wireless operators. Just to keep in touch with the ground as they were going through their training, two or three hour flying training. Situations. And you all aircraft had to have a radio to keep in contact with the ground.

No, no, no. It’s all logged, they had it all logged, it’s written in the log book there.

There was no counselling, never even thought of it.

No, not particularly, because you are so isolated, you were there on the radio, they are there trying to learn a job and I think they appreciated we had been through it, we weren’t just straight rookies as we called them. If we were telling them to do something, they knew showing them something that we had been gone through the

mill and that we were experienced. They appreciated that part. But by the time we got them to our boys, they were learning navigation we didn’t know navigation. While we were at Ballarat they had too many of us there, and got a commission by this time, so they

decided to fill in some vacant spots, and they put me into administration. And I said, “Ooh, something on here, if you are any good at it they are going to keep you there”. So I made a very, very bad botch of administration. It’s on my records, “Not suitable for Administration”.

Losing files, lot of intelligence work going on, I heard people next door doing this and all this sort of thing, and I would screw something up or get something lost, or write a bad letter or something. Deliberately sent myself out. It paid dividends.

So it back fired again.

Within about six weeks.

Ballarat and then we went on to Mt Gambier. The school shifted to Mt Gambier and we were flying out of there.

I am not quite sure better conditions, Ballarat was very bad for radio communications, fog and weather. Mt Gambier was better,

better for astro navigation.

It was clearer, the atmosphere was clearer, not so much turbulence. Of course Ballarat is right on the bottom, you never knew what was going to come at you.

I know flying up at Ballarat on a night training exercise in the old Anson,

and there was a terrific wind, tail wind. The pilot had training navigators on board, and he knew he had over shot coming back to base, he had over shot something, he wasn’t going the right way, so he asked me to try and get a direction on my little radio loop. So I tuned into the Batchelor

station and got him on a zero beat, and told the pilot, “One hundred and eighty degree turn and put your head phones on and keep in this little narrow gap”, no sound. As he deviated he heard the station come in and he got himself back and it was about an eighty knot breeze blowing up there, and the old

Eggy could only do about one hundred and twenty knots. So gradually he limped in about an hour overdue. That’s one of the reasons why they chose Mt Gambier.

I had a good time there, it was a lovely little place. I was able to get to town quite a bit. Socially, the girls are nice. Happened to have a

get to get into the hospital scene with the nurses. They are much easier to get on with.

No I used to get a bit of leave and go in there and give the rear girl a ring and she would say, “I’ll change”, and she would get someone to fill in for her and we would go out and have a good time.

So we enjoyed ourselves there for a while.

About three or four months, December 1943, I got the news that you are being posted north to Townsville and to form a crew with your former pilot

Dick Oberhoy (Sp?) in the Liberators.

It just came through. I don’t know, Dick Oberhoy, he had a DFC [Distinguished Flying Cross], was well regarded as a war time pilot, excellent record and I don’t know whether he asked for his old crew back again, but I see

that they had ten crew and we formed our four from Batchelor 2 Squadron formed the nucleus of a ten man crew. We found from this nucleus we built up a new crew for the Liberator. I was the wireless operator, Gambini was the gunner, another chap called Lance Wheel was the navigator and the four of us

formed the nucleus of this crew.

Well I was very pleased to go away to go away from the dull routine of no action sort of thing. I was very happy when I got my posting. Upset the CO of the station when I turned the bar on for everyone. “Lloyd’s got a posting”.

The drinks are on me because he had been trying to get up north too.

The new gunners, well we didn’t know them until we joined them there. The engineer was experienced, we hadn’t met him before, he was off Catalinas but the rest of them were virtually new chums, straight of course sort of thing.

So,

Oh well we had to get them trained properly, and we had to go to Charters Towers. The Americans had a big training squadron out there, school, so we had to go to Charters Towers to the Americans, we were there for four weeks I think, no only about four days training there, at

Charters Towers.

Just an air field.

Oh huge area that’s how we eat American style.

Well there was no rank to start with, you joined the queue and you took your two tins along, your two cookie tins and they, “Plonk, plonk, plonk”,

and one for your sweets and one for your savoury. One American with a big beautiful slab of steak here, something here and came up to the ice creams, put it all on, ice-cream on steak.

Oh yeah but we joined in,

they had one of their own footballs there and we were throwing it to each other, and one of the other crew members from the other crew, chap called Calder, he used to play for South Melbourne Football and I used to play a bit of football myself. The ball would go up

and put it down for a beautiful mark and I knew what he was going to do, he stud kicked it and I ran away up the flanks and got the ball. Tom knew what I was going to do, torpedo punched over there and we get the ball off these Yankees and they didn’t like it.

Yes they had tennis courts, they had a coach, guess who? Famous Australian player, they now have a competition every year, what’s his name? Hopman. Harry Hopman. Okay,

Oh they were, beautiful tucker, accommodation was quite reasonable.

They made us welcome, and put us through their hoops. They were a bit dubious about us learning how to fly their aircraft, so we did a lot of ground work beforehand, ground training, because

the bomb aiming situation is far different than what we had done, and they had put a new Gordon bomb site, so it took several weeks for our bomb aimers to become accustomed to that, because when the bomb aimer goes in over the target, the pilot lines up the target on boroscopes and all

this type of thing and then the bomb aimer goes down and he puts his sights on his target like this, until he gets within a certain range and says I am taking over, and the pilot throws down the right switch, and he is flying the plane over the target, and then bombs away, and very complicated, so it took them about four weeks to

manage, to get all the kinks out of it to become proficient.

Not particularly, we appreciated the heavier guns, the 5s instead of the 303s, although as senior wireless operator, I had a stand by a young trainee one from (UNCLEAR) so I was made tail

gunner, and we had to learn new radio tricks with the American style radios.

Oh, a bit more complicated. AWA [Amalgamated Wireless Australasia] had a very, very simple, fool proof one, very good too, but the American one was a bit more up market, as you might say. But I got used to it after a

while, had to play around with it fine tuning it and this type of thing.

We had five crews in our group, we were the second group to go with the Americans, so there were fifty there, and they kept coming along all the time after that and we had five crew members, five aircraft,

five full crews and after our training at Charters Towers, we went across to Mooresville and teamed up with the 529 Squadron, B24 Squadron, United States Army Air Corps.

Yeah, still RAAF we retained our Royal Australian Air Force

profile right throughout. When we went in to the 529th, because right through air crafts you fly in threes, leader and two wingmen. Our leader was an American, and he had two Australians on his wing. But when we were doing our flying training at Charters Towers,

on the first take off and landing situation, the Americans crewmen in the pilots seat, and my pilot was in the second pilot’s seat. He said to Dick, “About fifteen hundred?” He said, “I have got three hundred here, you take over”. That was his training and

take off and how to land a Liberator.

They did three hundred hours action and immediately taken out and given a rest. They were nice people, but our second radio operator he needed training a bit more, bombardier needed a bit more training, and

turret gunners, we had nose gunner, top gunner, mid upper, tail gunner, and a ball turret gunner. The sights on the three standard ones, normal sights, moved around as your target goes around. But the ball turret gunner sighting totally different, it was all complicated, and you were out there and

track him in, track him in, and adjust as the span of the wings and everything like this, all on visual and when he got to a certain place, press the button. They had to get used to that.

Eventually they were, when they got more training of course. But their navigation was practically nil.

Not us, but it concerned a lot of people, if I had to land in Australia somewhere and say, “Where am I?” They seemed to get by though, but they carried a lot of spare safe hours, they called it “safe hours”, so plenty of time up your sleeve to correct misdirections. But our navigators were,

after a five hour trip, 5ive minutes off estimated arrival time, so if it was five hours they weren’t very good.

They were spot on.

Oh we are still in New Guinea, now.

At the moment with 529.

We were there for about six weeks I think and

then the whole Squadron came to Fenton, and we came with them to Fenton. And we still flew with them and all their sorties, the same combination, the one leader, and we called him “Big Steve”, he was about seven feet tall, his name was Virgil, so that’s why we called him Big Steve. He was a bonzer chap

and the two wingmen, Napie’s on one and Oberhoy on the other. And our first big operation, it was a very big show, we were travelling from Darwin, ten hours, eight hour flight almost halfway up New Guinea. Place called Noemfoor, it’s a fighter strip,

and the whole American forces were just going up north, and they wanted all the Japanese air capabilities stymied, and people from Darwin going up bombing all their air fields and trying to lock out their squadrons with their fighter air craft and our particular job was to knock out this

fighter strip Noemfoor. It was a big time, and when we took off, the orders were to fly loose formation, until you arrive at a datum point, which is some point, and then all the squadron would come together and come in as one. Dick and Napier were just flying loose, and over the intercom comes Steve, and

he says, “Hey guys, we are supposed to be flying loose formation”, and I heard my guy, “Hey Nape, what about it?” Nape said, “Go”. They closed in on him. Wing tipped him, to show him what close formation was. Just a side issue that one.

But they broke away into loose formation for the rest of the

journey and we arrived at datum point on ETA [estimated time of arrival] and milled around watching all these other aircraft coming in.

They were all over the place, but finally got there. And then we went in on target and we had to go in, we had one Squadron going in at eight thousand feet dropping heavy bombs, on the air fields,

and we were going in at four thousand feet dropping fragmentation stuff. And going on this bombing run dropping from four thousand feet and I think my pilot called out to the Americans and said, “There’s not much anti aircraft down there, what about it?” And so these three big lumbering Libs turned about and did seven strafing

runs up and down the strip, strafing them. We were quoted with twenty seven aircraft. Unfortunately, the other aircraft, the Australian’s aircraft, one of his motors were put out, all this distance on three motors.

Bit of shrapnel, something else.

Not very much though.

He was, his motor went, so he was limping home back to Darwin and my pilot, kept his speed down to almost stalling speed to keep him company, and it took some time, but we got back to Darwin alright.

We were averaging fifteen hours each time we went out.

And back again.

Well we would take off, you would test everything you have got, because there is no need to go and man your posts until you are near your target, so you wander around and do this and do that and

difficulty, especially when you are up high, and you’ve got all the winter woollies on, and you want to go to the toilet, and all the toilet is, is a little tin cup you carry, you had to take all your flying clothes off. Awkward.

No not particularly.

We were all pretty well in together, we welded very well.

Well see on the ground, we were separated out, because officers and NCOs [non commissioned officers] go in different messes, in eight different places. They had their own

messes and officers had their own mess, we had our own Sergeant’s mess and the men had their Sergeants mess and the officers’ mess and the two didn’t get together very much on that.

Active? I didn’t think so, but the Americans thought they were very active. They were a bit, a bit

scary, they weren’t they came in at you, you would see them and then they would break away, they had canon, they were using canon, in those days, and you would see the canon and they would break away, they weren’t coming very close.

Oh yes, different aircraft too. Because the Lib was very heavily armed, each of the turrets had

twin Brownings .5 automatics and they pumped some lead out, then we had the waste windows, then we had four turrets and eight .5 Brownings, that’s in one aircraft, now you get three aircraft together, don’t think the Japs liked us. I don’t think they came in very much.

Well, I know it from nose to tail, put it that way, what do you mean what do you…

Well the nose turret was way out on its own, and he’s got a beautiful view that guy, the nose gunner, he’s a straight air gunner not a wireless air gunner, and he’s got a beautiful view all over the place, sit back and relax,

and the top gunner, well he’s got a good view all round the place very well, tail gunner, it’s a bit cramped, I don’t know how the Americans got in, I was small, I was cramped in it, to such an extent that later on when we fitting out one of our Libs for para troop dropping, I had my knee cut open on the

ground playing rugby, midnight in the officers’ mess, CO hosed down the mud floor,

So I got carted off to hospital and stitched up and back to my squadron and we were out about eight days later, on one of these trips and I am in the turret, like this, and my bloody knee cramped up, the stitches are catching me, and so I pulled up my trousers, and got a pair of pliers out and

pulled the stitches out and put me trousers back again, but it was cramped. So you didn’t stay in those for very long.

Oh yes, they had intercom right the way through, you had to report your positions and that type of thing. And the ball turret, which I took over later on, well that was something out of the gun

you got down like that, and pressed a button the turret dropped out, and you pulled another trigger, the guns are facing down, and you pulled another and your turret rolled back with you, of course you are under the aircraft. And if you want to turn the whole turret moved around with you, and you moved around with it, when you got used to it, and you are doing an overland trip or something, you pushing down,

beautiful.

Originally a bit intrepid, a bit dubious, I took it very gradually, I thought I will get in I will let myself down, because if I don’t like it I will press that button and shoot myself up. Let myself down and thought this is not bad, this is what you have got to do to get the guns up,

lift it up a bit, this is interesting, but once you got used to it home and hosed.

Well that had a side movement, you couldn’t go down too much because you had your tails each side, you had cut outs on your

guns, so you wouldn’t hit your tail. Elevation down, but you had tail there, that one would cut out so you couldn’t go much down. You could elevate it up as much as you like, but you are sitting in there and you are going around with the turret, you don’t move the turret. You move the whole thing. And you had plate glass in

front of you to protect yourself. And ordinary Perspex above that. So reasonably comfortable, it was all hydraulically operated, as you moved around the turret moves, so you are not putting yourself into awkward angles. You don’t have to bend over like this, or bend back, the whole thing goes with you.

It is.

All depends on what height you go, the temperature remains right through practically the same. We had air right through pumped on, air on hand, oxygen, you had it all there.

No central heating, you took your flying clothes with you.

With the Americans I think off hand one hundred and eighty, about twenty.

Mainly we were doing all eastern side of New

Guinea, because the Americans were moving up there, from Hollandia, we were working out from Hollandia at times, and going up north, right up north side of New Guinea, into Io-jima into that area.

Well they had practically the northern part of New Guinea, and this is where their

air fields were and this is what we had to knock out. In that area.

Well with the Americans we know we destroyed twenty seven on the ground, but the rest I don’t know, I know we didn’t shoot any of them down, I know I was in the turret and I was

chasing one Jap coming in at me, and I saw him pop off his canon, and he broke away, and we didn’t shoot anyone, none of our crew had any angry shots, very many at all. Some of the Americans, they claimed thirty odd Americans,

Japs shot down, but they asked us how many we shot down and we just said none. We had, I think, three crew at this time, one nose gunner said he thought he had hit one down, and so he was credited with two. But that was all, but the Americans claimed quite a few were shot down.

We could see the metal pouring out of their guns, because they had tracers in them, I don’t think they were aiming, holding the gun down, just like a platform of bullets coming out. So they might have shot down a lot I don’t know.

No we

didn’t fire on any I don’t think.

Oh one coming in at me but he broke off beyond my range with the .5s.

You are just concentrating on purely what his speed is or trying to work out his speeds, or how much allowance you have to make, if he’s coming in at an angle,

go above him or down, you have got to try and work all this out.

Well only from experience, you didn’t have any calculators, you were told, if they are coming from this direction, your speed is so and so, his speed is so and so, you generally know those things, and if you fire here, by the time he gets to hear your bullets sort of thing, you got to lead him in or

so if he comes straight at you from the side, well you have got to fire so many yards in front of you to let him run into your bullets. But you are trained in all this sort of thing, not mathematical, it’s purely calculations in your mind you see. You get very good at it.

See side on, the west windows, they were manual and their sights was a ring like this with a bead in the middle and a bead on the top, and the old saying, “You keep the bead on him”, and if he’s coming in on an angle, you don’t keep the bead on him, you put him in that part of your circle, so by the time he comes here,

he should be hitting your bullet, not your bullet hitting him. That’s a theory.

Estimation. Speed and you are told the speed of these aircraft.

Oh yeah, we did recognisance, not so much with the Americans, because we

were more or less on fixed targets. But later on with 24th Squadron we were doing a lot of recognisance work.

We were dropping para troopers, they were a group of five spies really. Special forces, they were Indonesian, but they belonged to the Netherlands East Indies Army Forces.

Because Indonesia was all part of the Netherlands East Indies, and all army people. I think we had six in our particular drop, and this was when we first started off with our 24 Squadron. We had to get the aircraft modified, two aircraft modified, took the ball turrets out, and put

shoots in, and our particular drop, we dropped six I think, way up north in New Guinea, the place was called Manokwari, if you look at the map there is a big parrots head of New Guinea, and it’s right in that parrots head area. And we were working out from Hollandia, much

further south, well we flew from Darwin to Hollandia, and from Hollandia up to this dropping zone, and of course you had to get the lid down, the speed down to practically stalling speed, which is pretty dicey, and find your target area and drop them, and we came back and loaded up torpedos as stores and went back and dropped the stores.

No. I think the troops were dropped, we didn’t hear anymore about what happened to those troops, but we heard they got out okay.

Dutch, Netherlands East Indies Army Troops, but they were Indonesian. Because where we were dropping them was part of Indonesia and Dutch Netherlands East

Indies. That was their country

End of tape

Not Moratai, no. It was up in that area, Moratai is a bit further out.

Just the once, we only had the one drop.

We didn’t, but we know they maintained communication, we don’t know where or what, that was not our field, we dropped them, that was the end. We dropped the torpedo stores, as well after we dropped those, we went back to Hollandia, fill the bomb bays up with these torpedo stores. Opened the bomb bay doors up and dropped

the torpedos and that’s the end of it. We just closed everything up and went back.

It wasn’t unusual for us, because we had to special modify our brand new aircraft, that we got from America, take the ball turret out, and put a shoot in for the parachute to drop out of.

I don’t know what happened to those aircrafts.

We took about two to three weeks I think.

No we did this in Darwin at a place called Pell Strip, right in Darwin itself. We were at Fenton, no we were at

Nambaloo [?] at this stage and we just brought the aircraft in from American, and they went to Amberley in Queensland, and our particular group, we had a small group of five pilots, and two of us had to go to, two crews had to go to Amberley, and we test flew all these new aircraft. I was the wireless testing

operator and I was testing the front guns as we were flying. When we approved all that we should get from the Americans under the Lend Lease, we were supposed to get so many guns, so many this, so many that. We did an audit actually of what we got, and it was all in order so we signed off and go out aircraft. Once we did that, we flew them over to Nambaloo, where we were reorganising

24 Squadron. The Americans had Fenton by this time.

Fenton further north in Darwin area. So we were reassembling 24 Squadron, previously they were a dive bombing squadron of (f…UNCLEAR) engines. And they were going out of date, so they closed that side

down and reformed it as a 24 Liberator Squadron. So we were the first to bring these aircraft in. And that was the first operation of the new 24 Squadron was to get these para troopers in.

We hadn’t had very much briefing, well we didn’t, the crew. The pilots and navigator’s were, because they had to find a

slot. They had to know petrol, and to know how much petrol they had to take. Timing, speed which you have to fly in to drop the para troopers, because it was a pretty slow speed and dangerously low speed for a Liberator, and it was almost what they called a stalling speed. The plane just drops out of the air.

Just to get the paratroopers out.

Oh very mountainous and roughly timberous, it’s where all the mining is going on now, what they call Irian Jaya, that’s was the top area, pretty

mountainous stuff and pretty rugged.

Well it is difficult to find the target for one thing, but had to be precise navigation, and to find an open space where we could drop these para troopers. But because the mission went off quite well, and we believe the paratroopers did the right job and reported back safe and sound,

and did what they were asked to do, report on the movements on the Japanese in the area. McArthur was over to readjust his troops accordingly. It was a pretty important mission that one.

Well it was the overall situation, that McArthur then knew

how much troops he had to have to bring, what ordinance he had to have to go into that particular area. He didn’t want to go in under and he didn’t want to go in over. So, it was working for the whole effort actually. The whole war effort at this stage was dependent on what was up in that area. Of course the Japs were on the run at this time.

We realised it.

Oh, we didn’t get the “Woman’s Weekly” up there too often. That was our news.

I don’t know what was in the newspapers because we just didn’t get them. “The Woman’s Weekly” was our best news.

We did want it at that time because we were running short of it. In the toilets.

Yeah.

We used to read it as well you know.

We had our intercom right throughout, pilot right through to various gunnery positions, right throughout, we all had our own stations. And you would report your progress, report your position, getting near to action, you would go down to your station, call the pilot,

so and so, and so and so. Testing my gun so and so. It was complete, very good communications.

Not very often. The pilots could talk to each other, intercommunications between the various aircraft and very good radio communications in those days.

We didn’t do any trading.

Oh no, transport, we’d go to a transport operator, we weren’t involved. We stayed, we were mainly domiciled in Australia or at the

American bases. The transport boys were going into Manila all over the place. We didn’t have any opportunity to do any trading. We used to swap a bottle of whiskey for something. Their messes were reasonably dry, and we used to swap a few bottles of whiskey for something.

Oh, clothing and that type of thing.

We could buy their cigarettes, after shave lotions, everything, wonderfully equipped those.

We had more alcohol.

We didn’t have that much, because we were on

limited supplies because we were too far away from everyone. Occasionally an aircraft went south, could load up with a bit.

Well, the officers’ mess and the sergeants’ mess, well we didn’t have a sergeants’ mess, they had their own vitalling side of it, and they could go and buy enough up for the messes and sell it over the counter

sort of thing, normal club situation. But when you are going out in the Darwin areas, the supplies are so limited, you can’t do very much like that, but down south, you can go into your bar and get a bottle of this and a bottle of that over the bar quite easily.

When we were with the Americans, their medical situation was different from our in that our medical officer had to speak to his commanding officer, and his commanding officer had complete control.

And if he thought the medical officer is asking too much he won’t get it sort of thing. Whereas our air force or the army, the medical officers were completely separate, they had complete control, and the commanding officer was subservient to the medical officer. So, one particular mess area in Moresby, they had a huge mess, everyone

to eat all their meals. Didn’t have very many fly screens or anything, and it was right next to the latrines. And we didn’t like it, so we called in our air force doctor, and he just looked at it and said, “No air force man in RAAF shall eat here, simple”, “Where do we eat?” We asked, he said, “That’s your business”. Not allowed to eat there.

Fortunately we could go into Moresby and they had an officers’ club in Moresby, and we were able to buy a few tins of fruits and that type of thing, and take it back for the rest of the crew who weren’t officers, this managed to keep us going.

Like all American clubs.

Oh, pretty lush,

very, very up market sort of thing, loud music and girls of course all over the place, what girls that were available. If you wanted anything, it was there able to buy if you wanted it. They looked after themselves very well. NAAFI [Navy, Army, Air Force Institute] in England did too, the English people,

they had a good show too. We didn’t have a very good amenities.

Very few around where we were, because we were on the operational side of it. They might have had some of the native girls, or something like that, they could take them up there. But no they were all very friendly the Americans, they

took you in as one of their own, and they had lots of things we didn’t have. Wonderful food, God knows where it came from, because they had all this huge bringing this navy bringing stuff in, ice cream, turkeys, you name it they had it.

No I don’t think so. The old saying, “Over here, over fed”.

No we didn’t think very much of it at all.

The only ones, the pilots and some of the air crew got on well together, and belonged to the 5th Bombardment Association Group of America. Quite a few of our

returned from that crew belonged to it. My pilot and Big Steve, they communicate regularly together. Steve came out here once and I took him around here. There’s still that camaraderie about it. Because you don’t call them Americans, they are Texans,

they are not Americans.

They are different. Anne was a bit concerned when Steve had been to Albany where my pilot had a farm down there, and Dick had rung me up and said, “Could you meet Steve and take him around him a bit when he’s coming back through Perth?” I told Anne, she said, “I don’t want to have him here, I don’t

even know the man”. I said, “Don’t you worry dear, don’t you worry”. So he came in on a small plane from Albany, about ten o’clock at night. And I was warned he would be last off the plane because he’s so big. Big man. I wouldn’t have missed him any rate. Only ten off the plane, small plane.

Behind them all, this lumbering big chap, I said, “How are you Steve?” “Eh, you old son of a gun”. This is my wife. “Oh, isn’t she lovely? Oh”. Anne fell in love straight away. That’s how he was, a big Texan. Slow drawl, slow walk.

Generally together, it was. We all seemed to band together with our groups.

Well before the war, started off, because all the pilots that I flew with,

went through the permanent air force, cadets, and they were elite. You couldn’t speak to them sort of thing. They were it, you were just there. That went on for a while.

Well they got the usual name, I won’t tell you what it was. The ones I got to know later on they were all quite friendly, I was

quite friendly with them later on. But there was definitely a standoffish part of it to start with. Some of the pilots I flew with I got friendly with very well. So main pilot came in right after the war, he was a commercial pilot.

Clive Foreman, he was a lovely gentleman, Clive. But some of the others they were prigs, put it that way. And when you with them on the crew, they were very nice. Just on their own, they wouldn’t even say hello to you.

They were born that way. They were officers, we weren’t, that was simple.

I started off pilot officer first. March 1943.

Didn’t like it at all. All my friends are sergeants I had been with them for years. I didn’t have any boozing comrades at all in the officers’ mess, because most of them were instructors, down there at Ballarat.

Hardly flown anything, mainly ground staff officers, shiny bums we called them.

I was at first yes. For a while until I got into things a bit more. Because sergeants, they all have

a little thing in common, specially the returned ones. Been through the mill and didn’t like discipline and all that type of thing. Completely undisciplined you know.

They didn’t take it out on me because they still forgot I was a pilot’s officer.

We used to get to Melbourne occasionally and get on to a booze up. I had my officers cap with me this time, I had just flown my thousandth hour, and they pinched my cap, filled it with beer, broke the wire out of the brim and everything. Now you are a thousandth hour man.

Used to be. Yeah, it became common. Thousand hours was the critical factor, they say. There was a lot of hours for an air crew a wireless operator, not so much for pilot because they are flying much more. So it was quite some target really to reach that thousand hours.

I could say thousand hours, 14th Squadron, you would call it “soft operation”. Operational, they call it operational hours. 14th Squadron you would call it “soft

operation”. Most of the first year, 1941, the only enemy were the Germans and we were well away from them now. So most of our operations, though it was operational, they turned soft. So about I had about two hundred soft hours with 14th Squadron. But when I got to Darwin I tallied up about six hundred operational hours.

So that’s nearly eight hundred, so the other two hundred hours just flying from point A to point B, so by the time I left Darwin I was in the twelve hundred hour mark.

On operational and soft operational about nineteen hundred. Nearly two thousand.

Not over six years

though.

Oh, there was always a bit of quietness went

on. No one mentioned it, no one talked about it. It was going on all the time, the guys with 13th Squadron, this is before I went to 2. I noticed pilot officer coming up with a crew, and he was my stroke in Swan River Rowing Club, I rowed with him.

Bob, I forget his name. I thought I’ll go and make myself known to him. He went out that night and never came back. This is how it was, I never saw him. No one knew what happened to him. He went out, and just never came home. Somewhere over Koepang, we don’t know, on his first trip.

Whether he misjudged something, or whether one of his engines cut out, at that stage, the original aircraft engines were Pratt and Whitney, they were very good engines, they got a new brand of motor in, and they started burning oil, they were very dicey ones. They were in for a month before they got rid

of them, so it could have been one of those jobs, I don’t know.

They ran out of oil if they are burning it, the motor would seize, heat up and seize up. So they got rid of that type of engines, but whether it was in this chap’s plane I don’t know, but he just

didn’t return to base.

No just missing in action. I don’t know what happened to him.

Well generally, he was billeted with

someone and someone else would do it and would get together and pack up his things and send them back to HQ, who would then dispose of them to his nearest relative I think. But, that’s how things were, one day they are there and the next they are not.

I don’t think there was any trouble in Darwin, because we had a regular air mail service, flying up there still to Darwin, that was a regular mail service, and it was reasonably good. What happened in the eastern states I don’t know, how their mail came through I don’t know. There was always transport coming up continuously,

Americans had trucks coming across from Queensland across that way, Americans had their trucks coming through. There was always trucks coming into Darwin.

Not that much. I was only writing to my mother and occasionally to my sisters, but that’s all.

Oh yes.

Mother didn’t know I was air crew.

I didn’t tell her.

No. She thought I was just a wireless operator.

She thought I would be on the ground.

Definitely.

My mother wouldn’t express her

opinions. Couldn’t, she was a wonderful woman. She just absolutely takes everything in her stride. All inside, she would have felt it, but she wouldn’t release it.

I didn’t see very much of it. I got parcels from the Lands Department, they had their own situation, they had their own

situation, group in the Lands Department were sending them out, and occasionally get a parcel from them.

Oh, food, we had tinned food, quite pleasant, bit of cake, quite pleasant, good relief.

Only when we came down to Melbourne, the southern stations, Melbourne, not up there you didn’t meet anyone.

No, I wasn’t worried, no. Didn’t feel anything, enjoyed it all the more when I got down south.

When did we start 24? June, about six months, June to December 1944.

We were posted to down south, because we had done our tour of operations and we were posted to 1 OTU [Operational Training Unit] at

Tocumwal, huge place.

On the border, the river of New South Wales and Victoria.

And I thought I have never heard of Tocumwal. Everyone was given push bikes to ride around.

I was supposed to be

instructors. As wireless operators we didn’t have anyone really to instruct or instruct in, because they had learnt their trade, how to receive Morse and fire a gun and so we showed them a few tricks of the trade and that sort of thing. We practically had nothing to do. Getting sick and tired of yourself.

We had little cottages actually, timber, wooden cottages, about four or five rooms to a cottage, and ablution block, quite nice though, they burnt easily though.

Burnt very easily, I got caught in one.

Yeah. This is late in the peace, I had just come back from

Nice silk stockings and all.

Just after. We were originally taking a mission

from Australia across to Singapore for the signing of the surrender. But unfortunately when we got as far as Burma, and one of our engines cracked up and we had to make the aircraft unserviceable until we got a replacement engine, so we were in Rangoon for about

three weeks before we could do anything. While we were in Rangoon we got hitchhiked into Calcutta, hitch flew, someone was flying across there, the English had regular flights across over there and did a bit of India then and flew back, and came back to Ceylon and the other engines were playing up

and our flight engineer saw that the Poms had a beautiful big Buick motors, so he decided to change all four engines. He was doing all the work whilst I was helping on the ground throwing him spanners and that. Only the two of us. And we’d break off go for a swim in Ratmalana in the surf there, beautiful.

We were doing this for a week or so, and by this time our officer in charge, who was a wing commander, a pretty high rank in those days, name is Manning. He’d been laid low with the belly fever, and got well enough to come down to the strip this morning, and decided to help us.

I am up on a platform and the other flight engineer is up on the top wing and I am throwing this, and Gog’s throwing up a spanner, and up it would go, and hot as hell you know there, and Gog took his shirt off, I didn’t have a shirt on and the flight engineer didn’t. And just then a couple of English mechanics around the place came over and gave us a hand.

They joined up. And the navy truck came through, the whatsaname truck with all their morning tea and eats and that type of thing. And Gog decided to put his shirt on. These poor English irks, wing commander, they had to go and change their pants. Unheard of.

These are things that happened all the way along the line.

Yes, high level passengers though.

I have forgotten now, but I knew they were well up the top level, brass, put it that way. Because they had to be transported with other

people across to Singapore.

Well we were at Tocumwal and we had the aircraft to do it, and so we flew from Tocumwal across to Cocos Islands, and we could do that in the Liberator, and Cocos Islands over to India, Burma, across to Burma.

It was a most civil aircraft for that type of thing. I think I got the job because I had been a bit of a naughty boy at the station. I was a flight Lieutenant by this time.

I played up I wouldn’t do this, and I wouldn’t do that.

I got a posting back to Ballarat. I dint’ want to go to Ballarat, the war was

over and I refused to go. So a duty officer for a week.

Punishment yeah.

You weren’t supposed to drink, that was one of the worse things. You had to go down and close the sergeants’ mess at nine o’clock at night, and that was a horrible thing to do. Nasty thing.

Well cutting a man’s beer out.

Very unpopular. So my pilot was attached to this flight, the second pilot Gog Manning, he was a West Australian by the way, senior officer, on flight. Felt a bit sorry for me and made sure I

got this trip out. Compensation.

I don’t think I visited any exotics, except Ceylon was a lovely place, Ceylon. Ratmalana the air strip was Ratmalana, that was right on the coast, beautiful surfing beach there, and

the rest of the crew were able to get up in to the Kandy Mountains, they enjoyed themselves. I was out helping our flight lieutenant fix the motors so we didn’t go. India, horrible.

You see this beautiful place out there, and to get to it you have to walk over dead bodies in the street. Shocking,

I was horrified. It is the worst place I have ever been.

I wouldn’t say that was an exotic place.

I just couldn’t understand how people could go like that. Lying on the

streets, just behind there was this beautiful big building. Shudder, shudder.

Tocumwal.

Well, it was expected of course, and

the station had almost emptied actually, when the actual news came through there were very few of us left on the station, and the mess was just left open, you could virtually go in and help yourself. And go to the cookhouse, and slice yourself some ham off. Just help yourself to whatever was available and that was it, nothing else to do. Could have gone into Melbourne,

but we knew we were getting posted back home so we didn’t. We didn’t want to do too much in Melbourne.

Absolutely relieved to put it that way, because I was never a military man. I never liked discipline.

Indulge in it to any extent, go out on all parades I couldn’t do. Dressed in my own way, slouch hat, untidy shoes.

I think so.

Yes, it would have been 1945, yeah. We were at Tocumwal and got a sudden call to man the aircraft, fly to Melbourne, pick up the tapes, the film of the Melbourne Cup,

direct to Darwin, we got it there about eight o’clock or something at night time. The boys are watching the Melbourne Cup that night. The following morning, flew it across to Bougainville. At that time Bougainville was full of troops, all over the place. The following night they were watching the Melbourne Cup.

I don’t think we had time to arrange that.

They would have heard it you know, they would have known the result.

In the end? I came back in January 1945. Posted for demobilisation in 1946.

Well I took a bit of leave, had a lot of unused leave in the air force. I took a bit of leave there.

I forget, quite a lot.

Well see the family were back in Perth, and I had a series of different girlfriends around the place. Renewing old acquaintances.

Down at the rowing club, trying to resurrect the old club at.

Swan River Rowing Club, trying to get it going again.

Right next to the West Rowing Club, which is still there, Barrack Street. The old what they called West Rowing, West Australian

Rowing Club, they are still there, and we were next door.

No. We used to have kegs.

What happened to it?

Well I used to row.

They used to run every

second week I think we used to run a little same club, competitions, different grades of the club, about every second or third we would have inter club races. West Club, there was ANA Club which is further up the river, there was Fremantle Club, Maylands Club, quite a few rowing clubs. We had Regattas there. About once a month the

Regatta was held.

Oh on the Swan River.

Those days we started off, the three mile started off at Crawley and the two mile a little further in, and the mile just out down the narrows, the finishing spot was the Narrows Bridge.

It’s pretty heavy water there of course. You can only row in the winter time actually. Sea breeze ruffles the water up too much. Actually they are rowing on the Canning River now, which is calm all the way through. But in those days we were walking, rowing on the Crawley side of it. I rowed

before the war. I knew I was too old at twenty eight, but we had to do something to try and keep the club going.

Oh well, six years the club had closed down, the Americans had taken over the club rooms, one of their officers clubs and dancing and that type of thing, and we got

to try and resurrect the club. We used to tizzy the club, floor up and have dances on a Saturday night. Anne used to play the piano occasionally up there, and

Possibly. I won’t tell you that. But we used to run these things, and Saturday regattas we always had a five gallon keg down in the boat shed

and that was on all the time. Those days you had a party, you had a keg party.

Brewery, hotel, they were wooden kegs. If you were running a party at home you could get a five gallon keg and set it up in the backyard.

Oh practically there, but you buy it normally through hotels, they get them. And you buy a five gallon

keg. And we sed to have these every time we had a club regatta, we had a keg down at the whatsaname, dancing. No we wouldn’t have a keg, we would have a few bottles tossed in.

Yes. I think I did.

Trying to fill the day and night in. Work, I was working

of course I was working.

I went back to the Lands Department.

But because we were given a bit of latitude there too, because all of a sudden you would be looking around for some guy in the Lands Department, “Where’s Ron”, “Oh he’s up above”. Every so often, there was a pub quite handy to the Lands Department there, and that was there bar they used to go down there

two or three times a day.

In Cathedral Avenue, in those days.

It was the corner of Irwin Street and Hay Street. Kings.

The public service was pretty free easy. They knew that everyone was unsettled. They gave us about a year to settle in, put it that way.

Yes. We used to drink a fair bit in those days.

Where am I living?

Mt Hawthorn I think.

No Mt Lawley to start with.

Yes.

No problems actually, they were going there way and I was going mine. There was no arguments and no questions asked. Might have been a few eyebrows raised, but I don’t think so. I had a car, I had a Baby Austin.

So we took about two years at least before I got settled down.

Just settling down. What else am I going to do?

I would think, I will go down the pub and have a drink. I was drinking too much I know that. But we got over those things. But how I met my wife, she was at a club dance, Saturday night dance at the rowing club, and I was treasurer at this time, and I had a bag of coins and all the entrance of money, it was

two shillings I think. I had this little Baby Austin, car. And finished up I was settling everything up, and Anne and another girl there, because transport was very poor in those days, and one lass lived out, way out the other side of Mt Lawley, Dog Swamp way,

and Anne lived in Maylands way, so bright spark me said I will drive you both home. And this was about midnight. Going to Mt Lawley, and went up a bit of a hill like this, just over the hill, I hit something. It was a drain they had dug for public water supply, about that wide and that deep.

Baby Austin was direct steering. The front wheels went down there. Another car parked on the other side and I tipped that and tipped the car over. The other girl wasn’t very happy, and Anne was jammed in under the car at this stage, and so much for might be fire there, and I don’t know how I did it, I just lifted the car up, and I dragged Anne

out. Broken her glasses and things like this, she decided she wasn’t feeling well, so she decided to go home to her mother in Brookton. She had the Brookton Hotel. Next thing I know I heard that she was in hospital, broken ribs or something. I hardly knew the girl. But when she was going down to Brookton, the train left at seven o’clock at night,

Albany train and when I said goodnight, she poked her head out the window, I kissed her. Something happened, I don’t know what.

So the next thing I know she is in this hospital. And some silly person told me it was a maternity hospital. Because the hospital at Brookton had closed down, except for the maternity ward. So I sent a telegram, to Miss Ruby Rogers,

care of the maternity hospital, Brookton. Surprise, what is it? Get well quick. And this goes, because country telephones, telegrams, that’s rung through not private lines.

I didn’t know her very well then. And when I got this notice of what she had wrong with her, hospital bills, I said I can’t afford this, I got to

marry the girl, because I couldn’t get insurance because it wasn’t my fault.

Oh I married her. Couldn’t do anything else could I?

Married ever since.

I don’t know how my sisters put up with me, I am a bit of a larrikin.

My brother did, my elder brother, but I don’t know whether the others did.

He was talking to someone else

I had come down on leave in the first part, and my brother, elder brother, was in Fremantle workshops

in the army, he was a jeweller, he had a jewellery business in Kalgoorlie see. He was too old to go into more active service, but he was in the workshop. I came down on leave and I found out where he was and went down to see him and I said, “What are you doing?” He said, “I will get out of this alright”. He jumped the back fence we’ll go to town and have a

beer. So I met him in the Savoy Hotel and had a few beers, we knew the bar maid there, she was an ex Kalgoorlie girl. We had quite a good time, he had to go back of course, and I had to go back to Darwin, and he told my other brother, he said, “Lloyd thinks he’s alright, but he’s absolutely a bundle of nerves, he’s jumping up and doing this and doing

this”. He said, “The poor cow must have gone through hell”. I didn’t notice it, but he did. I must have been pretty bad because I married that thing. I thought I came out very well.

I had an elder sister you know she was worse than I was.

Her brother was going in to the Masonic hall somewhere in dress suit,

and tails and she ironed his shirt, starched all the bottom.

She was everything my sister.

We were married in 1948.

At the Ozone Hotel.

Gone.

Right down on the front of Riverside Drive, near the Hyatt you know where you right down there and there used to be the tram station down there, and

the Ozone Hotel used to be right on the corner of the waterfront on the Swan River.

Mmm?

The Ozone?

Yes. No I think

where the Woodside building used to be, there’s something they call the Ozone there.

Get some air.

No it wasn’t in the front.

St Mary’s Cathedral wasn’t it?

Oh yes. Big family. Had six sisters, five of them were married and they all had offspring.

Family were living in Brookton then.

Definitely made up the numbers. Anne had a few friends of course, she worked in a department store, and had quite a lot of friends there.

Well first we had rooms, one room to start with, because accommodation was very poor, very hard to get.

So we had one room, at Inglewood, front room or something. Then a friend of mine I used to work with in the Lands Department, he was going to Darwin and he wanted to sell his place, a little home in Mt Hawthorn. I didn’t have any money, but I spoke to Anne’s mother, and she had a little bit of spare cash, and she bought the house, and instead of

paying it off, I just kept paying rent. During her life time. We lived there for twenty five years, in Mt Hawthorn. When her mother passed away, and we were settling up all her estate, this house came on the market, so we decided to buy this one.

Lived here.

I won’t commit myself.

Forty eight, forty nine years, apart from my service.

Well I worked it out, I was in a senior position, by this time and the amount of superannuation

I was paying, the amount of tax I was paying, and the value of the superannuation policy, I was working overtime, but you didn’t get paid for overtime on the status I was on, that was supposed to be all included in the pay. Just worked whatever hours were required of you. Under pressure, and worked out I was

working for about eighty dollars a week. So I thought it was not worth it. So at sixty two I decided I would give it away. I think quite a lot of civil servants did in those days. That was because of the high tax, the high superannuation you were paying. The higher you got the more money you had to put in.

The return on your superannuation policy in those days, was relatively good. And as I say the difference between all that was about eighty dollars, that was how much you were working for all the work you putting in to it. I was getting stressed, it was stressful work.

Senior administration

Reasonably high, in those days. Chicken feed now. But in those days it was reasonably high. Lot of stress. It was tied up with all these iron ore agreements, oil and gas agreements, and you are on the go all the time, and didn’t know what you were going to do from one day

to the next. You think you could knock off at five o’clock, but you had to stay back at seven o’clock, eight o’clock.

Well I worked in several departments, stayed in the Lands Department until about 1950, in the ‘50s, and I thought I had a good

job teed up in the Lands Department. I was acting senior State Immigration Officer. Not paid very much.

And I knew the job was becoming vacant and I knew was sitting pretty for it, because some of the work I had done I knew it was appreciated.

At that time it was going to be advertised, but there was another job in the Premier’s Department at the same rate. So in those days you applied for everything. But I was reasonably happy about the immigration job. The Assistant Under Secretary of the Lands Department was second senior man, he called me in and he said, “Lloyd, would you be

prepared to take the Premier’s job?” I said, “I have put in for it”, he said, “Yes I know you have, you are a monty to get it, if you want it”. “I prefer this one”. I looked at him straight, “what’s going on? You are going to recommend me aren’t you?” He looked at me, shook his head and said, “We have been advised

by the Public Service Commissioner, that he’s got the right officer for this job, one of his friends”. Pointless recommending you. This appeal, you have no chance of getting it”. I said “Okay.”. So I took the Premier’s job. It was a very interesting sort of a job.

When you go to the Premier’s Department in those days. I think there was a staff of about fifteen, that’s how small it was, but you were doing everything, you were called upon to do anything. But the job was to be secretary of various country committees, the Premier had set up committees right throughout the state to gaze a

feeling in the country areas what is required. And each area in the state like, Bunbury is called the south-west, Albany is called the Albany zone, Katanning area is Catanning Central District. There’s another one, Carnarvon have another one. And eastern gold fields

and Esperance had one, they all had their own committees and I was going to be Secretary of the whole lot. But reason he wanted someone in a hurry was because they had a consultant to form a director of engineering as a consultant engineer for the department, and they were trying to find out what was happening

in the northern areas, like Geraldton. Population of about eight thousand people, no industries. How did people live? What is required? And all this type of thing. And this consultant was going to go around all the districts and size up the situation and put in a recommendation. He wanted someone to be his offsider. And that was what they wanted me for in a hurry. Because they knew I would be

Secretary of the Land Board. I had the experience. So it was this guy, Sir Russell Dumas, and I went around with him for about six weeks, to these country areas trying to size up what they wanted, what development they needed, how can we help from here. Not much you can do for Geraldton, except they needed an

abattoir so we got them an abattoir, this type of thing. When that was all signed sealed and declared, I carried on with secretary of all these various committees, and I was going up to Carnarvon, I would go down to Bunbury, I would go down to Albany. Go to Esperance, Kalgoorlie, Leonora, Laverton, inland to Katanning, Mt Barker. All these places I was going

to. I was little king pin. I knew it at the time. In those days when you were with the Premier’s Department, - see they were very, very shrewd, it was a department but it wasn’t a branch, it had no specific job. Like Public Works Department, they had housing, public works, state housing commission, they had the housing side of it.

All these other departments had their own particular fields. And they used to argue amongst themselves, but when you were with the Premier’s Department, they had no one to argue against. So if the Premier said this, it was done. I was virtually a junior officer at this stage and I had an office on the fourteenth floor, twelfth floor of a building in St George’s Terrace, overlooking the Swan

River. I used to ring Anne up and say, we didn’t have air conditioning in those days, “Have a whiff of my air conditioning dear”. I would ring someone up, someone in the department wanted some information, and I would say, “Edwards, Premier’s Department”, and you could almost hear them sitting up straight, “Yes Mr Edwards”. I got a hell of a lot of work done this way.

I worked behind the scenes. I used to be known throughout and I carried this on later on when we were working with these engineers, mining companies. I wouldn’t work for the top echelon, I would find a suitable man about my standing in that company and I used to ring him up. And I got more work done

that way, than the others they would hold a big committee meeting and discuss things, and I would get it all done beforehand. It was a good job, interesting.

Oh yes. But Premier’s Department, I even had to take a Dutch consul round, escort him round the

south-west on a bit of a holiday. Escort. Might be a big show in Government House ballroom, something like this. I was involved in these sort of things. In those days in the Premier’s Department, you were called on to do practically anything. And I managed to get Anne to some of the garden parties, where all the hoy polloy go. Skulduggery I got an

invitation sent out to her. I enjoyed myself reasonably thoroughly. The Premier of the day was Lymrell (?), and the leader of the opposition his private secretary went on three months leave, and he said, “Lloyd you go down there and be his offsider will you”. So I went down to John Tonkin’s office, and see if we liked each other, he told me what he

wanted. He said, “Any questions?” I said, “Yes, if you ask me any questions of what I have learnt in the Premier’s Department, the answer is no”. He said, “Thank you Lloyd I like honesty”. So we got on well together.

Yes, it was a very interesting way of life. But later on it got a bit pressurised and I was working with a bunch of

engineers which I didn’t like, engineers they think they are god’s earth. No one knows anything else but an engineer.

Not very well.

Like the second in charge, he’s a doctor of engineering, and

going through one of the agreements, and he said, “This company owes us fifty thousand dollars”. And I said, “You think they owe us and they think they don’t, that’s going to be trouble if you demand it they’ll take you to Court and say you don’t”. He said, “See what you can do”. So I rang up my

friend in this company, he said, “Yes, you are right, we’ve got this amount of money set aside just in case, but we are not going to pay it”. So I squeezed back to my boss and said, “Well if you take the Don Quixote approach that’s how far you will get”.

With the American Squadron?

We were on this combined American attack on Noemfoor which is

again up in the northern parts of the island of New Guinea. This is where the Americans were wanting to take their battle up into these areas, and they wanted their whole Japanese air force bombarded, all their air fields bombarded, and all their air strips. They didn’t want to much Japanese

aerial ability in that area. It was the duty of this 529th Squadron, the American squadron which we were operating with, that was their job in Darwin to go up into all these areas, take the whole Japanese air force as our targets, and we had to bomb all their air fields, to try and stop their

air ability, attack ability. This particular mission we were on, was quite a number of aircraft involved, big armada of Liberators. We left Darwin and of

course we kept in our own flights, each three aircraft separate flights. We left separately in that and reassembled at a point and then went into the target area as a full Squadron. So the target area, this particular one was Noemfoor. A Japanese fighter base.

First part of the bombardment was the high level bombing to destroy this strip and everything around it. They went in about eight thousand feet and we went in about four thousand feet, it was shrapnel bombs, to blast everything else out of the way, and whilst doing our

bombing run, we noticed there was very little anti aircraft there. And I am not quite sure who motivated this, but I think it was my pilot. It came over the intercom between the three flyers, that there was no ack ack. Let’s go down and strafe the bastards. So there was three big lumbering Liberators went back and came down the strip, almost at ground level,

all these aircraft on the strip, got all our guns blazing at them, and did three bombings, three strafings, and we are officially credited with twenty seven aircraft. But then we had to fly back to Darwin.

Got the American

Air Medal for that one. Because one pilot had one of his motor’s shot out, he was a long way away from home, and he could only fly back on three motors and the pilot of my aircraft, he held back his speed to accompany him back, at dangerous speed levels. Finally

both got back to Darwin alright. The Australian air force awarded both the pilots the DFC. It was actually my pilot’s second DFC, but none of the crew got anything. Apparently the Americans didn’t like this, because they gave their pilot and their crew something, so they decided to give

the crew’s of these two Australian crews, Air Medals, so that’s how we got the Air Medal. For this particular job.

We didn’t get them until about six months after the war ended. American consul came over and apparently had a big of an argument with the air force, found they weren’t doing anything,

so decided they would give us a citation.

The American consul came over to the east and Anne was invited, quite a show there.

Yes, it was.

I don’t think so.

Yes.

Very little. Originally they set up a retirement village at Bull Creek, quite a big one, and the association got more and more involved. Looking after this retirement village situation

and we weren’t interested in it, and we used to go down occasionally to some of the dos they would have and mainly the residents would be involved in these barbeques and this type of thing, and we were virtually looked upon as interlopers, so we just lost a lot of interest in it. Still belong to the association, but not a very big interest in

it.

Oh they are doing a good job for a lot of other people though. I mean they are doing a good job for themselves, it’s quite a business these retirement villages. They’ve got Merriwa, Camray, Bull Creek, Meadow Springs and another they are building at Mandurah, they are building one at Albany,

and they are trying to get permission to build some more. But it is a lucrative business these retirement villages.

End of tape

2 and 13 Squadrons during the period April 1942 to August 1942, did such a wonderful job in the war effort, according to the Americans, that the President decided to cite

both Squadrons for meritorious work. So he presented 13 Squadron with what he called a Presidential Citation, which entitles you to all crew members, air force members of those squadrons, that they have a Presidential Citation, which is a little blue emblem which they wear on the right breast. So I have got for

13 Squadron, I could also get one for 2 Squadron, one’s enough. Similarly, later on when we were flying with the 529th, they were involved in two very, very, very important striking missions, which had such a wonderful effect on McArthur’s ability to go further north, but the President decided

to present that squadron with two Presidential Citation Medals. So, that squadron people were entitled to two Presidential Citations. But instead of getting two ribbons they had one ribbon with the oak leaf cluster, so I have an oak leaf cluster one for the two citations, and I have a blue one for the one citation.

American Presidential citations. So, that’s a story about those ones.

I used to march, go marching until the last couple of years. But the last one, I used to drive down to the air force association and get a bus into Perth,

and they parked the bus so far from the assembly points, and the last one I had, I had difficulty getting back to the bus. No taxi, they were gone, so I cut them out.

Very important. As I say, Australians are very loathed to accept history to a great extent, nothing happens

here, they know more about England and the War of the Roses than they know a bout the Anzac side of it, so it is important that the people of WA are taught to recognise, especially the efforts of our troops on Gallipoli and subsequently on the

World War II. You know in the World War II situation in 1940 in Melbourne, the war effort was getting very low, so they called on all the troops, trainee troops to march through Melbourne, navy, army and air force, and flags waving and people

screaming their heads off. When the air force went through they were booed. And the term mannequins, purple orchids. We couldn’t work it out for a long time. It was just after the shocking action in Greece, where our troops were over there and they didn’t have any air cover, absolutely decimated.

by a huge German air invasion. Paratroops going down and they didn’t have any air cover. And they were taking the blame out on us. Booing us, because we lost a terrific number of men in Greece because of that. We found out later that England didn’t have the air power to support the troops in Greece.

They were in there, but he couldn’t support them. That’s how it was.

I think it has more volatile.

In the reception. The last one I was at the people were very boisterous, cheering, clapping. Previous to that they just acknowledged it sort of thing,

but they had more children there, and I think they are getting a bit more publicity about it I think.

I think it’s a good idea.

Well people are recognising what the grandfather’s have done and they want the rest of the world to know it too.

See, most of us won’t be marching anymore. Anzac Day will fold up if something isn’t done to keep it alive. I am young at heart, I am only eighty six, but there’s not many of us left you know.

Well, unless they realise the effort and

that’s been put in to providing something for them to live together, I think they are going to lose all sense of propriety actually. Just going to take it as it is and pride, they won’t have any pride in their country. And pride in their country is something that I value very much. Same as people say where do I come from, and I say

Kalgoorlie, I was only born there lived there five years, but I love Kalgoorlie. I just say Kalgoorlie, I have pride in that place. Pride with what my mother did, not what I did. My mother brought up nine children, she didn’t have air conditioning, she didn’t have butter, she didn’t have milk. They had to buy water. Oh no, I have pride in that, and that’s why I say Kalgoorlie,

and that’s what I think should be happening all the way through. Kids say, “Oh Dad went through a lot.” Or “Look what Granddad did”. “That’s wonderful isn’t it?” They have that sense of pride.